


A Deal with The Dev- Ahem, One-Winged Angel

by Houdini_the_Second



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Action, Action/Adventure, Complicated Relationships, Drama, Eventual Romance, F/M, Humor, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:49:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 45,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28541319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Houdini_the_Second/pseuds/Houdini_the_Second
Summary: Set directly after the events of Final Fantasy VII: Remake Part I.Aerith Gainsborough has spent the better part of the last few weeks of her life convinced that fate is immutable. Your past, present, and future, all written in the liquid stone of the planet's lifestream.Aerith Gainsborough is wrong, and now, with an expansive and unknown future laid out in front of them, she and her friends must blindly navigate this new path in unwritten time to ultimately save Gaia, and perhaps, even the world.Expecting to face Sephiroth in battle weeks away, Aerith is blindsided by the ex-Soldier's appearance in her life about a month too soon. Aerith soon finds herself convinced of a greater enemy than even the One-Winged Angel himself.Desperate to save her beloved planet Aerith does the unthinkable. She makes a deal with the devil himself that sets her on a path she could have never imagined.While she and Sephiroth endeavor to change fate itself, Professor Hojo begins work on his new plan: Project S-A.This is an Aerith/Sephiroth fanfiction, and will primarily focus on these two characters, though it will touch on the shenanigans of Aerith's friends every so often.
Relationships: Aerith Gainsborough/Sephiroth, Tifa Lockhart/Cloud Strife
Comments: 55
Kudos: 124





	1. The Angel Descends

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone!
> 
> I was perusing the Final Fantasy wiki and reminded that, at one point in time during game development, there were talks of making Sephiroth and Aerith lovers. And so, as my very first FFVII fanfiction, I decided to take a shot at doing just that. 
> 
> This fanfiction very much takes place in the Remake's continuity, and picks up just outside of Midgar after Chapter 16 of the game. While it takes up after canon material, the rest of this fanfiction will differ in plot from the actual game, with new antagonists, and some sometimes major, and sometimes minor, adjustment to canon characters the cast have yet to meet. 
> 
> A warning to Zack fans: there will be some painful moments for the man in this. I don't write them lightly; Zack is one of my favorite characters in the entire franchise, and it's hard to hurt him. I'm sorry to the Zack fans.
> 
> This is a plot driven fanfiction, but sexy times will happen. Not to the point that it gets boring, but it'll be there. Be warned.
> 
> The time frame will be about a year, or longer. Can you believe the original takes in place in the span of a few weeks? After 5 years of sleep, poor Cloud is immediately dumped into the fray, and faces Sephiroth after only a month of prep. In hindsight, I personally don't believe that's the most reasonable of time frames, but when the world depends on you, what you gonna do?
> 
> Anyway, I hope you all enjoy!

* * *

# Chapter 1

## The Angel Descends

* * *

### Aerith

Aerith Gainsborough was perfectly normal, thank you very much. She ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner, showered as much as was reasonable, and slept for as long as she could. She worked for a living, contributing to what meager wages her mother’s status as widow-to-a-war-hero generated, and was very good at her job, which, to some, wasn’t much a job anyway. Her life was punctuated by perfectly normal. 

And yet, in that very moment, Aerith felt far from normal.

The tornado of energy that had surrounded the young woman and her comrades dissipated as quickly as it had appeared. The silver haired demon, progenitor of the sickly green storm, had vanished. Cloud stood at the center point of the receding turbulence, his hair bristling wildly in the ragged winds. 

She watched with morbid interest as one sleek, inky feather floated down to earth, seemingly from the center of the origin of the natural anomaly. It settled unhappily on the handsome blonde man’s palm. Cloud stared at it, eyes empty and full all at once; he folded his hand around it and it ground away to speckled black dust motes. 

They stood in silence for a while, thinking, fearing, wondering. Cloud wanted to hunt Sephiroth. The others would follow him to the ends of the earth for that purpose.

Especially Aerith. Aerith, who knew she had everything to lose, and nothing to gain, from her future with that silver-haired devil. Her mind coiled away from the memory of his cattish, virulent eyes. Unfeeling, unflinching, uncaring. Fear gripped her like the talons of a mature drake, tearing into the, presently fragile, fiber of her being. 

Somehow, _he_ knew too. In the brief moments when their eyes had touched, green against green, two wills of opposition clashing at the seams, he had communicated in his countenance the vastness of his knowledge. Fleeting as these stolen glances were, Aerith’s skin prickled to know she and the monster shared an understanding that ran deeper than her connection with anyone else; not Zack, nor Cloud, and not even her mother.

What she and Sephiroth held privy to the peering eyes of the world was a knowledge of things yet to come. 

She would die. So would he. 

Their battle would become eternal, souls absorbed by the planet’s life stream, constantly at war for control of the Earth, a half-alien half-human mind contending with the knowledge and power of a half-Cetra half-human conscious. Their faiths were intertwined together, even now. 

They knew this. And yet he chose to war against the things that had not passed. By Sephiroth’s intervention, Fate had been changed, ironically immutable, now. Aerith was not sure what came next. And neither was he, that devil-man.

Suddenly, sheets of rain cascaded down from the overcast sky, drenching the young woman and her comrades. With several heavy, exhausted sighs, they plunged forward, dragging themselves towards a banged up motorcycle and a muddied, baby blue pickup truck. 

“Where’re we headin’?” Barret grumbled, staring forlornly at Midgar, no doubt ruminating on memories of his little daughter. Lightning snapped at the city’s skyline as though it were aggravated with the metropolitan. 

“We can’t go back,” Tifa mumbled, sounding as forlorn as Barret appeared. Midgar had been her home for the last five years. Moving on without saying goodbye clearly depressed her. 

It depressed Aerith, too. She would never see her mother again. 

If certain people could just, oh, disappear from the timeline altogether, maybe leaving home and never seeing it again would have never had to become an option in the first place. 

Sephiroth was such a jerk. 

She sighed heavily, and Cloud followed suit, sliding into a lean against the motorcycle. 

“Shinra will be hunting us.” Cloud grumbled. 

“We can take ‘em!” Barret said brightly, pumping a heavy fist. 

“We can’t,” Tifa contradicted him. 

“We can try,” Cloud mused, shrugging. 

_And they could._ The idea struck Aerith with the same force as the lightning strike against Midgar’s towering skyscrapers. 

The thunderous storm, curling fog, and heavy rain would provide a cover they had never anticipated in any other timeline, simply because _this storm had not existed_ at any other point in the universe, nor time. 

“We can try!” Aerith exclaimed, clasping her hands together excitedly. Four pairs of perturbed eyes—she had forgotten Red XIII—turned to her expectantly. For a single, transient moment, she lost herself in the brimming curiosity of her friend’s eyes. Hope and fear flashed from each set, conveyed in different ways. 

Sucking in her breath, she pointed a slender arm skyward, in the direction of Midgar. 

“The storm doesn’t look like it’s letting up any time soon,” she blabbered, struggling to keep an even tone in her excitement, “I bet we can sneak in!” 

“But how will we sneak out,” Cloud said, not unkindly. His brows had mashed together in the middle, the very image of utter confusion. Aerith felt her heart race; Zack used to do the same thing.

“Maybe...maybe we won’t have too,” Tifa said, sounding more optimistic, “Maybe we need to bide time in Midgar.”

Aerith nodded. Kalm would have been next on their adventures. They would have turned up at the town broke and desperate for food and supplies. Regrouping this way might aid their cause in ways yet unforeseen to the planet.

“An’ how are we gonna keep under the radar,” Barret frowned, unusually astute. “The slums’ll be crawling with them dirty Turks.” 

“Turks aren’t perfect though,” Aerith mused, “Me and Cloud lost Reno easily. They’re proficient, not omniscient,” she said, grinning satisfactorily at her little rhyme.

“We can’t visit our homes, or our friends,” Tifa warned.

“We’ll set up base in a different Sector,” Aerith continued, still too buzzed by her epiphany to heed the difficulties they would face, “We’ll wear disguises. Travel by night. That sort of thing. Like spies.” 

Color had begun to return to her face. She was recovering from the group’s encounter with Sephiroth. Her usual positive disposition tussled silently with the impending sense of doom that had made a cozy home in the back of her mind. 

This, they could do. She was sure of it.

“I’m game,” Cloud said, shrugging. There was a profound stiffness to his shoulders that spoke volumes; Cloud was only game because their options seemed obscure. He wasn’t sure what to do. His encounter with Sephiroth had obviously unnerved him.

“Ok,” Tifa stuttered, looking unconvinced. Tifa, though depressed about leaving, clearly seemed torn between their two most obvious plans of action. 

“We’ve taken ‘em before,” Barret exclaimed. “If it comes down to it, I’m ready!” Aerith knew he only wanted to see his daughter.

Red XIII simply dissented with the group’s opinion. He would be the most difficult to hide. With a pang of sympathy, Aerith realized their predicament would only jail the dog-like creature again, though perhaps in a more comfortable housing than his time with Shinra. 

With a last collective nod, the group readied themselves for their entryway back into the fray.

### Tifa

They abandoned the vehicles far from Midgar and walked back. The rain, which continued to pummel the Earth, seemed unwilling to let up. The sheets of water that fell from the sky were so thick Tifa could barely see a few feet in front of her. 

By the time they arrived at the city’s gates, entering at Sector 5, topside, sneaking in had become trivial. The inky night, coupled with the wall of water constantly pouring from the sky, and the thick, unrelenting fog, provided ample cover for them to creep past the guards at the gates. 

Securing disguises proved the most difficult challenge. A twinge of regret coursed through each member as, one after one, they mugged various passerby’s for money, food, and clothes. 

Finally, they tucked themselves away into a dark alley, contemplating their next move and “sheltering,” if you could call it that, underneath the bars of a dripping fire escape. 

As they decided where in Sector 5 would be safest, still drenched, and getting wetter by the minute, Tifa theorized the IDs provided by Jessie would still work.

“They’re knock offs of actual resident IDS from the Sector 7 slums...” Tifa said. “There’s a good chance those people are...”

“Dead?” Barret finished, fishing around in his back pocket and retrieving a small, plastic rectangle. 

The name on the ID was Walter Penance, but the face was Barret’s. Scanning these would have the Shinra database retrieve the original Mr. Penance’s name and face, but physically presenting them to officers would surely get the group caught.

Tifa nodded silently. 

“She always made knock offs from citizens who couldn’t afford to travel. The chances of abnormal scans happening were low because those people were never going anywhere. And we know Shinra doesn’t give a damn about IDing those deaths.”

A heavy quiet swallowed the group. The amount who had perished would be innumerable. 

“Our biggest problem,” Tifa said, breaking the silence and spinning around, “is you.” 

Her eyes fell on the quadruped form of Red XIII. Soaked in rain he looked like an unusually red, shaggy dog. Wet or dry, however, the giveaways were hard to miss; the mane, brandishing, and ability to talk would cause him to stick out like a sore thumb. 

Some approximation of a frown tugged at the edges of his mouth. 

“I can remain hidden,” he seemed to promise, “I’d rather stay in a human home all day than be back _there_.” A shudder quaked through his frame. 

Tifa nodded, flashing him an apologetic look. Folding her arms across her chest, she stared into the deep black of the soaking night. They would get sick, loitering around in the wet like this for hours on end as they had been. Aerith was already sniffling, and Barret had taken to periodically wiping his thick forearm across the underneath of his nose. 

Even Cloud looked worse for wear, though that was due to a myriad of reason. 

“I have an idea,” Tifa said slowly, begrudgingly. Retrieving a pocket knife from one of the small pouches attached to her belt, she squeezed her eyes shut and turned away from the group.

 _Well, this is gonna be years worth of work gone to waste,_ she thought.

“Tifa...,” Cloud’s voice trailed off behind her. She shook her head. 

Raising the knife, she ran her hand upwards along the length of her hair till it stopped just below her chin. Lifting the curtain of silky black hair, she pulled it together at the decided cutoff line, as though she were about to tie it; then, she sliced it in what she hoped was a straight, horizontal line.

“Tifa,” Aerith squeaked as inky strands of hair pooled at Tifa’s feet. Immediately, the hair on her head, much shorter now, tickled her chin at the point where she had cut it. Her head felt lighter too. Interesting.

“Disguises, right?” She said to the other woman, smiling in a way she hoped conveyed confidence.

“It looks...good,” Cloud said, taking his best, monotone shot at being comforting. 

“Always the gentleman,” Tifa teased, though she turned to address Barret. Offering her palm, she smiled up at him and said, “Glasses, please.”

He passed them off without hesitation. 

Digging around in one of the knapsacks they’d managed to knick from an innocent civilian, she pulled out a clearly worn, black windbreaker. 

“There’s a boutique hotel not too far from here,” she said thoughtfully, “Situated in the same building as a strip club. What kind of refugees would take shelter in a strip club?”

“Our kind, apparently,” Red XIII said dryly.

“Exactly!” She said with a dazzling smile. “I’ll go in, get us a room, and you guys can sneak in through the back. Easy!”

The crew exchanged wary glances. 

“How do we know they won’t check you?” Cloud asked, “The city’s in a panic. Places will be on high alert.”

“And you think a ‘lover’s hotel’ will care?” she asked, miming air quotes. 

Cloud grunted. “I guess not.”

“I hope not,” Aerith echoed.

### Aerith

“Well that was easy!” Aerith exclaimed, moving to dump herself on the spongey looking king sized bed in their, evidently, extra large room. 

Tifa hadn’t spared any expenses; thanks to her and Cloud’s consistent work, they had a small fortune to their disposal that would, probably, float the group comfortably for a week...maybe...if they were careful.

The massive room came equipped with a heart shaped hot tub, a romantic, sheltered balcony, a king sized bed that seemed much larger than even that, and a host of towels and robes, undoubtedly for the savory parts of a lovers’ night. Little bits of candy were littered around tables, the bed, and even the bathroom. 

“Not so fast,” Tifa said, sounding alarmed, and grabbing Aerith by the arm.

“Why?” The flower peddler asked, perplexed.

“I’d really like to sleep in a dry bed tonight, Aerith.”

“Oh. Right.”

Aerith sunk to the floor. “I’m tired,” she explained apologetically, settling in the very shallow sheen of water that had pooled around her ankles.

“I know. Me too.” Tifa’s eyes were full of sympathy. Their similar temperaments had made both women fast friends. If anyone understood Aerith’s domestic anguish, it was Tifa.

The group waited in punctuated silence as, one after one, each warmed themselves with a steamy shower and a cup of the cheap, mass produced instant coffee the hotel had undoubtedly purchased in bulk.

Aerith took a towel and graciously offered to pat Red XIII dry, discreetly avoiding the mess of droplets that would have deluged the oaky wood floors had the dog-like creature been allowed to shake himself dry. 

Once everyone had settled, bedding arrangements were decided. 

Barret cramped himself into one of the room’s small armchairs, somehow managing to fit his massive frame into the confines of its constricting arms; he had pulled the other armchair to rest across from his and propped his feet on that. 

Cloud had sprawled out on the white chaise pressed against the windows of the balcony. He was out cold in a matter of minutes. His face, Aerith noted, was significantly more innocent in sleep; his slack jaw and peaceful expression exuded the sort the freedom that a waking Cloud never seemed to release.

Aerith and Tifa, obviously, took the bed. The guys would have never given them any other options. 

That meant all that was left...

“You can sleep with us,” Aerith suggested, patting a huge empty spot at the foot of the massive king sized bed. 

Red XIII’s ears pressed flat against his skull for a moment. Their horizontal direction suggested shyness, as opposed to aggression. She could see him deliberating on what the correct answer was, even though there was no wrong or right one to give. 

“We don’t mind,” Tifa assured him, already half-dozing off underneath the thick comforter.

“Well...ok.” His furry crimson body hoisted on to the bed and he settled in a disheveled pile at their feet. Aerith tugged, kicked, and struggled with the blanket until she was able to cover him. He seemed miles away from her, on this humongous bed. 

Where it seemed to take minutes for the others to fall into a deep, somewhat disturbed, sleep, Aerith lay awake for what seemed like hours. Thinking. And thinking. And thinking. 

There were so many thoughts it felt like her head might explode. So many issues to address, so many feeling to assess. None of it very good. She felt confused, torn, afraid...unsure.

She tossed and turned, sighed, teared up, covered her eyes, wiped her nose, then slipped out of bed, terrified she would disturb Tifa or Red XIII.

Creeping past a twitchy Cloud—his brows were pushed together again, this time in aggravated frustration, teeth grinding audibly—she cracked open the balcony door and sidled through. She was careful not to slip; the platform was still wet from the day’s downpour. 

Inhaling deeply, she sucked up the fresh desert air like a water deprived fish. She hadn’t realized how clammy her skin had become, how frantic her breathing. In the sleeping silence of night, she was panicking, she realized.

 _Well this sucks!_ She thought, biting down unnaturally hard on her bottom lip. She winced as the metallic taste of blood leaked onto her tongue. Oops. 

_Breath, Aerith. You have to be strong, for your friends._

That was right. She glanced at Cloud again through the paned balcony doors. His disgruntled face seemed to convey all the emotions he struggled to subdue in his waking hours. 

She sighed. They were not a mentally healthy group of friends, that was for sure. 

Turning away from the young blonde, she leaned on the balcony railing and stared down at the topside of Sector 5. 

The topsiders were still reeling from the Avalanche attack on the Sector 5 reactor; even the wealthy folk here seemed to have encountered their first taste of poverty and despair. People were becoming unhinged. And the attack on Shinra’s headquarters had done little to quell the growing unrest. 

This carefree, gung-ho way of living had quickly become embedded in topsider attitudes. Tifa’s ability to weasel out an extra-large room for one showed, in itself, the sort of carelessness citizens had adopted in a time where financial hardship and economic depression seemed close by. 

Aerith sighed. If only she could go back in time. It would solve a whole host of the Planet’s current predicaments. She closed her eyes, pressing her forehead against the railing. As an unhealthy amount of vertigo began to set in, Aerith wished these thoughts would leave her alone. She needed to sleep.

“Careful now,” a smooth voice cautioned. “You wouldn’t want to fall over.”

“Duh.” Aerith answered reflexively before her eyes flew open. She snapped around so quickly she was sure she heard her spine crack. She felt herself teeter slightly, still very much dizzy from the vertigo. 

She must have been going mad. Or the lack of sleep was getting to her. 

Standing quite still, and barely illuminated by the moonlight, was the towering frame of a man whose name she cringed away from even today, even just _this morning_.

_Sephiroth._

### Sephiroth - 3 Hours Ago

Sephiroth was just mildly irritated with the constant downpour. Impressively, the abrupt storm had been aroused by his disturbance to the planet during his most recent battle with his small, blond adversary. His power alone had accidentally created a miniature monsoon. It was somewhat satisfying to see what he could do by mistake, and even more so on purpose. However, the whip of heavy drops was serving as a cold reminder to the harsh realities of a human body. 

Sephiroth had forgotten what it was like to possess a physical vessel. His brief periods commandeering the bodies of his lackluster clones had done little to impart the challenges faced by a tender human capsule. And he had spent an unusual amount of time in a corporeal state in his endeavors to 'guide' Cloud.

Things like eating, sleeping, sweating, pissing, shitting, erections...those bodily trivialities had been all but forgotten. 

To the unpracticed eye, he would seem normal, graceful, even, in his new physical form; to Sephiroth himself, he was an overly large toddler in a world that felt like an equally large obstacle course. Even now, a shiver—unbelievably!—rolled down his spine as his softer human body was battered with lashing drops of rain. 

Of course, a soft, clumsy body was well worth the price of freedom. And Sephiroth was very much free now. Free to do as he wished. Free to change the world. Free to change his Fate. 

And change his Fate he would.

He plummeted through the sky at preternatural speeds, covering most of Midgar in mere minutes. 

His mind raced as he reviewed his laundry list of to-do’s.

  * Terrify Cloud - Check
  * Change Fate - Check
  * Secure New Body - Check
  * Convince the Cetra to Join Him - ?



Sephiroth grimaced.

In a past life—or rather, an alternate time—Sephiroth had ruthlessly murdered the half-Cetra girl, assuming her end would spell his success. 

He had been dreadfully wrong, and had ultimately paid the price for his blunder. The half-Cetra had pulled every stop to hinder Sephiroth. Their antagonistic relationship had lasted what seemed like an eternity; even in the lifestream, the young woman had continued to needle away at Sephiroth’s power, patience, and what little half-possessed sanity he had clung too.

Sephiroth could not afford to have her as an enemy this time, and he would see to it that such a fate were avoided. 

Of course, Sephiroth fancied himself in a much better standing now. Jenova no longer controlled him. He controlled her. In his eyes, that made him less responsible for the half-Cetra’s untimely doom. 

In this moment, many questions about Sephiroth’s sanity remained unanswered. He felt quite normal, and his thoughts, he believed, were on par for the typical human, save for the occasional impulse for world domination (a side effect of his Jenova heritage, he assumed). 

Though...perhaps ‘typical human,’ was simplifying it _drastically_. 

Not to mention that, though he could challenge her, his decision making skills were still adversely affected by the presence of Jenova.

For instance, he had not meant for Number 45 to murder Cloud’s hulking, gunner friend, and yet it had been unable to resist the impulse to act on Jenova’s, not Sephiroth’s, more primal nature. The simple minded clones, he had realized, were very unlike those such as Cloud. They could not resist the pull of Jenova’s murderous nature in the same way the aforementioned ex(not)-Soldier could. 

But, never mind that. Sephiroth had more pressing matters to deal with. He would figure out what to do with those clones later.

Sniffing out the Cetra girl was an easy task. Simply locating Cloud would lead Sephiroth to her whereabouts. The pounding rain did little to hamper him; he was far too strong for something like _that_ to effect this ‘tender,’ body.

He had to admit...though soft it was, his new form still dwarfed the normal capacities of the average human body. Advanced cell regeneration, tougher skin, night vision, and an almost endless repertoire of energy. Perhaps ‘tender’ and ‘soft’ were poor synonyms for this powerhouse. 

Sephiroth located Cloud easily. His mental signatures—aggravation, confusion, embarrassment—were easy to pick out from the usual monotony of Sephiroth’s multiple clones. Cloud, though irritating he was, had been one of the few Sephiroth-clones capable of resisting Sephiroth’s pull to some degree. It was impressive, to say the least, and spoke highly of Cloud’s personal integrity, a trait Sephiroth begrudgingly admitted was admirable. 

Cloud and his friends had sought refuge under the leaky rods of a fire escape and were debating on the steps they would need to take to move forward. Sephiroth perched on the overhanging apartment building and just barely tuned into their conversation. Their decisions were of little matter to him at the moment. 

As they ruminated on their choices, Sephiroth ruminated on his. 

Second chances, Sephiroth knew, were unusual, and few in number. Third chances were even rarer.

And he was on his third.

But what were Sephiroth’s goals? 

For starters, world domination had taken a back seat to saving the planet, which, even now, was dying from within. 

His own 'mother' had planted the seeds of rot within the earth herself when she had landed on this planet all those many years ago. With her body currently in his possession, he could begin to undo the trauma she had inflicted on the planet. He commanded her cells now; once they fully reunited with him, he would become even more powerful than he already was. And Sephiroth was already, very, powerful. 

Then there was Shinra. Though it contributed significantly less to the destruction of Gaia, Shinra continued to exert an influence that was detrimental to the planet’s healing. He would have to do something about that, too. 

But there was something deeper. Something worse. Something even Jenova cringed away from. 

And that something was a total enigma to Sephiroth. It’s existence had merely been glimpsed by him from within the lifestream in that alternative time, but what it was remained shrouded in mystery. 

Which was where the Cetra girl became critical. While not entirely necessary, saving the planet would certainly be aided by one who could communicate directly with it. And after all, her whole schtick was all about saving her precious planet, and it’s innocent people, and innocent animals, and innocent vegetables, and blah, blah, blah.

Sephiroth’s wants, though noble, were for much more personal goals. Whatever the state of the earth he walked on, it was his, already and forever. He owned the earth, even now. 

Unlike the misconceptions of his younger self, this Sephiroth recognized the futility of conquering the planet; there were other ways to expand his power that omitted the destruction of his only home, and other ways to becoming a god that ignored the destruction of an entire race of beings. 

And on this home planet, there was no being powerful enough to stop him, and if they did exist, they would soon find he far outmatched them. 

In other words, Sephiroth in his current state had already achieved a status far above that of any other non-god creature on this planet. There was no need to be greedy. 

Additionally, allowing fate to unravel as it had would only lead to his imprisonment, if one could call it that, in the lifestream. His imprisonment, and eventually, the end of his existence when the planet crumbled away to nothingness. 

So no. Sephiroth would not attempt to destroy the earth. He was not Jenova. 

But Sephiroth could not relish in his power if the planet and it’s inhabitants ceased to exist. He could not further himself as a perfect creature without other creatures to impress that perfection upon. 

At least. That is what he told himself.

And to that end, he and that merry band of fools debating down below about where to go had found a common ground to stand on. Even if they didn’t yet know they were standing on the same ground.

When the group had finally come to its decision, Sephiroth lazily followed them to a...strip club? 

A strip club. 

Of course. 

He waited on the building opposite, eagle eyes spying keenly on the odd assortment of heroes as they performed the usual domestic chores. 

Their feet dragged, and their shoulders sulked; the previous night’s events had gone well into the early hours of today’s morning, and Sephiroth was sure the group was feeling the aftershock of enduring battle after battle in their effort to escape Shinra. Not to mention, they had also fought fate...and Sephiroth himself. And followed that up with a trek, on foot, back to Midgar. 

But it had been the only way. Had they challenged fate any later, events may have simply played out the way they had been foretold to. And Sephiroth could not allow that to happen.

Now, he simply waited. There was no predetermined path hanging over his head. He could afford to wait, even if just for a little. 

He would need to get the Cetra alone. Which might happen today. Or tomorrow. Or a month from now. But, at the moment, Sephiroth had time to spare.

She wasn’t the leader (and in fact, Sephiroth was sure the group was more of a democracy than a dictatorship), but the others looked to her for moral guidance. Her own dated ideations about Sephiroth, astray as they were, had been more than enough to rouse the other four into battle against him just a few hours earlier.

The part of Cloud that longed to fight alongside Sephiroth also trusted him, and Sephiroth would use that longing to aid in gaining their trust. 

It would be difficult. Out of the five, Sephiroth had murdered two of the group’s parents, and technically, also blatantly murdered two of the group’s members. But they were all alive and well now. Mostly.

Something twitched in his peripheral. A slim silhouette creeping out onto the balcony. To human eyes, the shape would have been imperceptible, but Sephiroth could clearly see the half-Cetra.

His time had come earlier than expected. 

He took a moment to observe her countenance. She looked sallow, and her skin had dampened. Her eyes flickered back and forth frantically, skimming Sector 5’s skyline, but not really seeing it. She was panicking, Sephiroth realized, intrigued.

She leaned on the balcony railing, pressing her forehead against the cool metal, and inhaling deeply. Her feet seemed unsure, and Sephiroth could see the slight sway in her stance. 

Hmm. Humans were unusually good at accidentally harming themselves. For example, they seemed particularly apt at falling over railings meant to be chest high barriers to just such a thing. They were just...so able when it came to creating accidents that should not have happened.

Of course, Sephiroth doubted she would fall over. She was half-Cetra, clearly more capable than the average person, and leaning on a railing that seemed to be the correct standard for normal safety precautions.

Still, he thought, feigning kindness might get him in her good graces. 

Floating down to the balcony, he landed silently behind her quivering silhouette, wondering how she would react to his presence.

“Careful now,” he murmured, just loud enough for her to hear him. “You wouldn’t want to fall over.”

“Duh,” she retorted quickly, sounding mildly irritated. The searing sass behind her tone took Sephiroth by surprise. She took several more quick breaths before spinning around to face him, tripping over her own feet in the process. She was unsteady. Very unsteady. Perhaps bodily stress had made her ill? 

“You,” she breathed, eyes wide with alarm. One of her hands gripped the railing so tightly her knuckles paled to a bloodless white. The other reached for a staff that was safely stored within the room Sephiroth was blocking. 

“Me,” Sephiroth said, inclining his head in agreement. They eyed one another for a heartbeat before her lips parted, and, Sephiroth could tell, she prepared to scream. 

He, in turn, raised one hand to his mouth, pressing a single finger against his own lips. _Quiet._ This unusual gesture seemed to stop her in her tracks. He could see fear and confusion dancing in her emerald green eyes. 

They stared at one another again. Abruptly her shoulders sagged and she released her grip on the railing, dragging her feet to one of the small, woven benches pressed up against the edge of the balcony. 

She plopped down, doubling over to rest her forehead against somewhere near her knees. Sephiroth wondered if she would vomit. That would be his cue to leave, he decided wryly. 

Finally she looked up at him...and smiled? Brightly. Like a miniature sun lamp. Sephiroth had seen this display of cheer before; he had seen it through Cloud’s eyes, and even felt the rush of emotions it had aroused in the little blonde idiot. 

To Sephiroth, this face was both dazzling and perplexing. 

Some color had returned to her cheeks. That was good....no less confusing, but good. 

Though brilliant, Sephiroth remained impassive. This show of lunacy did little to deter from his actual goals, though it provided a bit of entertainment, and a dose of confusion, in the process. 

“I’m dreaming,” she declared triumphantly, raising a single finger skyward, and looking pleased with herself. 

Sephiroth resisted the urge to roll his eyes, and instead settled for a simple smirk. Smiling always seemed to put humans at ease; this face had even worked wonders to undo Cloud’s inhibitions. 

“And how do you suppose your are?” he asked, curious about her mental state. 

“Well, for one, I’m not dead,” she said, ticking off some imaginary list. 

“And?”

She shrugged, resting her hands on the bench and leaning back. “Dunno. Not being dead seems like the most major thing here.”

“And what if I said you were awake?”

She shrugged again. “You’re Sephiroth, even in my dreams. You could be lying for all I know.”

“I would be careful with your assumptions if I were you, Cetra,” he hummed. “Reality can be just as deceiving as one’s dreams.” 

“Tell me more, o’wise Sephiroth,” she said flippantly.

He frowned. There was clearly no reasoning with her, not now, at least. He would need to take a different approach.

“Why do you believe I would kill you?” he asked, both to divert her attention and satiate some of his own curiosity. 

Her eyes strayed skyward. Here, on the plates, one could clearly gaze upon the stars. The constant pollution from Midgar, Sephiroth knew, would eventually have led to so much light pollution that the night would have become permanently black.

‘Would have,’ only because there had never been a point in time where Midgar had survived the destruction that would have allowed it to pollute the air so badly. 

The stars danced in her eyes as she contemplated her answer. She seemed oddly calm; a sense of peace and acceptance radiated from her whole being. 

“Because you have before,” she finally whispered. “Because it’s what you need to do to win.”

Ah. That told Sephiroth plenty. The little Cetra only had a part of the information she needed to understand the future they had averted. Sephiroth would most definitely not win if he chose to kill her. 

His eyes narrowed. “Your information’s usefulness has past it’s time.” 

### Aerith

Aerith stared at this figment of her imagination with the computational power of a broken mech. Ergo, she gave him the blankest stare she could muster.

Apparently, her imagination was far more powerful than she’d ever, well, imagined. Sephiroth seemed so real now. Not just some fuzzy, poorly built manifestation of a fleeting, adrenaline tainted memory. Every bit of him was detailed. Far more so than she had ever remembered seeing.

How barely registered glimpses of the man in battle had transformed into the highly detailed render of a being she saw in front of her was baffling. Brains were truly something else. 

He was unusually...beautiful, she thought begrudgingly. This boosted her confidence in the idea that she was dreaming. Pure evil didn’t come in ‘drop dead gorgeous’. 

“My information’s usefulness has not ‘past it’s time’,” she parroted back, folding her arms across her chest. 

“I see,” he said, though the left edge of his mouth twisted, almost reluctantly, into a cheeky half-smile. “Perhaps you’ll be more open to suggestion tomorrow.”

“Nope. Because I won’t be dreaming about _you_ tomorrow,” she said defiantly. 

“I told you before,” he said darkly. “Those who look with clouded eyes see nothing but shadows.”

Aerith’s skin prickled. Her dream memory was being particularly acute tonight. Sephiroth had uttered those exact words to Aerith on the highway right before their epic battle. 

She watched with a horrific sort of curiosity as his being began to disperse in small wisps of black smoke. 

“Sleep well, Cetra,” he murmured before dissipating completely.

“Sleep well, Cetra,” Aerith grumbled in a poor mockery of Sephiroth’s voice. What a stupid dream. Tightening her arms across her chest, she leant back on the bench, allowing her back to rest on the railing behind it.

She would wait here, she would prove she was dreaming. And when she woke up, she would mentally reproach herself for making that man so damned beautiful in her mind.

* * *

“Hey, Aerith. Aerith!”

Aerith’s eyes snapped open. She straightened up, acutely aware of the ribbing pain pulsating along her back. 

Blinking until her eyes adjusted to the white light that had blinded her, she peered up from under her eyelashes and into deep pools of Mako. Cloud stared down at her, brows pushed together in his signature look of concern. 

“Why are you out here?” he asked. She could see Tifa peering over his muscled shoulder, worry inundating her warm gaze. 

“Out here?” she said groggily, rubbing her eyes. Out where? Who was out doing what?

“Out here,” he repeated, shaking Aerith’s shoulder gently. 

“Maybe we should take her inside,” Tifa suggested, her voice raising an octave. 

“Right,” Cloud said, nodding.

The next thing Aerith knew, she was wrapped tightly in Cloud’s grip, swinging around as he maneuvered his way back into their hotel room. She could have fallen asleep again, cocooned in his arms as she was. It was leagues more comfortable than whatever she had been leaning on. 

She sighed with relief when her back touched the plush surface of that inviting king sized bed. A sinking motion near her told her someone had sat down on the bed. Whoever it was rested a gentle hand on her arm. Tifa, probably.

“Hey. We need to know why you were out there,” Tifa said, shaking Aerith awake. There was a note of urgency in Tifa’s voice that alarmed Aerith. Had she done something wrong?

Prying her eyes open, she struggled to sit upright on the bed, and was relieved when Tifa moved to pull her into a sitting position. Rubbing the back of her neck, she peered up at her friends through hazy eyes.

“Where was I?”

“Sleeping on the bench outside on the balcony,” Cloud said, jerking his head in the general direction of the balcony. 

“I woke up and you weren’t here,” Tifa said, sounding distressed. “It freaked me out.”

“I’m sorry,” Aerith murmured, miles away, “I couldn’t sleep last night...so I went outside for some fresh air.”

“Oh, me too,” Tifa replied, relief coloring her voice as Aerith clarified the situation. “I didn’t sleep well, I mean. I kept having these awful nightmares. About us...”

Aerith nodded, frowned, smiled, and made eye contact at the appropriate times. She grunted, hummed, shrugged her shoulders, and looked at Cloud when the conversation called for it. But she was only half listening to her friends, sucked up in other hellish thoughts she was too afraid to share with them. 

_On the bench outside on the balcony._

_Had_ she been dreaming last night?


	2. Tips for Tips

* * *

# Chapter 2

## Tips for Tips

* * *

### Aerith

“Rise and shine!” Aerith said brightly. A chorus of protest echoed out around her.

“Five more minutes,” Tifa whimpered, twisting uncomfortably in the full sized bed she and Aerith were sharing.

After three days of leisure, rest, and relaxation (if one could call constantly looking over their shoulders, double checking locks, and peeking out of curtains restful) the group had abandoned their luxury room in Sector 5 on the topside and migrated to the hustling, bustling metropolis of Sector 6’s Wall Market.

Here, they had downgraded massively, finding the cheapest possible hotel to hunker down in while they recuperated and prepared for their eventual escape from Midgar. The demotion of room, and Sector, had cost them a moderate amount of the spatial comforts the boutique hotel and it’s quaint topside town had offered.

Sector 6 seemed untouched by its neighboring disaster. With an economy fueled by the elite underground, gangs, drugs, and sex money, the turmoil of the collapsing plate had barely effected its already tumultuous nature. If anything, the influx of refugees had only, somewhat macabrely, added to the undercurrent of excitement that moved this city.

Wall Street’s nature made it a perfect getaway for five more-than-capable most-wanted criminals looking to blend in with a crowd that was built on delinquency.

In the five days they had hunkered down here, no one had ever questioned them for constantly covering their faces, speaking quietly, and traveling by back alley and fire escape. In fact, more often than not, it was alarmingly common to see others doing the same.

In instances when they moved with the general public, the vibrant liveliness of the streets had served as ample cover. It was hard to pick people apart from the crowd when the crowd was constantly being covered in glaring neon lights, shrouded in thick blankets of outdoor grill smoke, and drowned out by the racket of parties, raucous conversation, and the occasional street fight.

Red XIII had also found he could stretch his legs, so long as he stuck to shadowed alleyways. The purveyors of such dimmed, narrow spaces were often too preoccupied with their dealings to pay much mind to Red. To them, he was simply an odd looking dog, and nothing more.

Though congested in population, being able to move freely had been liberating for the entire group. It had provided some sense of normalcy, granted, it was a very warped one. Aerith had found herself able to shop for food, clothing, and general supplies in the way she would have near her home in Sector 5, with the exception of constantly needing to be cloaked or hooded in some way.

“We rise with the moon now, I see,” Red XIII murmured sagely. His crimson muzzle poked between the tightly shut curtains of their tiny room, bright yellow eyes scanning the neon lit scenery below, no doubt wondering which alleys he would stalk today.

They had picked the most budget friendly room they could afford; the view was dismal, and the building across from them was run down, but the intricate maze of rooftops and fire escapes between theirs and the adjacent buildings had proved to be more than useful in sneaking in and out of their room. At the present moment, the manager was under the impression that the room only hosted Cloud and Tifa.

A sliver of bright streetlight flooded the room from where Red XIII had nudged his nose through the curtains, allowing Aerith to truly appreciate the filthy living standards they were becoming accustomed to. The walls of the room were dotted with mystery stains, the bathroom reeked of a subtle chemical odor, and Aerith was sure she’d seen cockroaches having a go at her backpack.

She shuddered, squeezing her eyes shut. This group of five was about to save the planet; fate _could_ have been kinder to them.

Speaking of. She quickly once over-ed her friends, cataloging any minute changes in their behavior or stance. They were rousing, slowly, from their day sleep, preparing to spend nearly 12 hours of darkness doing odd jobs and purchasing what useful items they stumbled upon. They needed to stay healthy, and they needed to be alert. And Aerith, as the group’s unofficial healer of sorts, intended to make sure everyone kept in tip-top shape.

“My back’s killing me,” Barret moaned, peeling himself away from the warm swath of blankets he had swaddled himself in. Like an overly large baby, Aerith thought humorously.

Barret and Cloud, on _masculine principal_ , had graciously offered to sleep on the floor, and the carpeted floor had graciously decided to be the stiffest mystery material known to man. It was rock hard, and as uncomfortable. Cloud and Barret had both begun to collect an unhealthy number of under eye black bags.

Tifa and Aerith had offered to take a turn on the floor, but both men had adamantly refused. Again, on masculine principal.

“Want me to take a look?” Aerith offered, raising an already glowing green hand.

“Nah. I’ll work it out tonight. Think I might just hit the gym.”

“Is that a good idea?” Tifa asked, muffled and still buried under a mountain of blankets. “What if someone recognizes you?”

“Yeah,” Cloud grumbled dryly, “Who could miss that huge head.”

“Hey!” Barret sounded indignant, but a smile tugged at his lips. “Well, you might just be on to something, actually. I think I look just like all them block heads that regular the place. No one would pick me out from the half a dozen or so other burly men there.“

“Isn’t that a little self-judgmental?” Aerith asked.

Barret’s huge shoulders rose and fell in one sweeping shrug. “If you said it, maybe. But tell me, if you went around hanging out with a buncha other pale, scrawny girls, you think anyone would think twice about who you were?”

Now it was Aerith’s turn to say, “Hey!”

“I’m not _that_ scrawny,” she continued, poking dejectedly at the soft muscles in her upper arm. From somewhere under her fabric mountain, Tifa stifled a poorly concealed snort.

“Sure you aren’t,” Barret nodded, feigning agreement. Aerith had the barest inclination that that was the patronizing tone he used to pacify Marlene and narrowed her eyes.

Grinning and shrugging his shoulders, he turned to a barely awake Cloud and nudged him with the tip of his toes.

“You getting up?”

Cloud growled out a string of dissatisfied and unintelligible grunts before pushing off from the floor in one, swift, almost graceful movement.

“I’m up.”

“Show off,” Barret muttered, rolling his eyes and disappearing into the bathroom.

* * *

“We meet here, in say, five hours, and find something to eat?” Tifa said, pointing down at the browned dirt spot at her feet. The putrid smell of the alley had Aerith tempted to forgo food, but she nodded her agreement with everyone else, and they split.

They needed money. Taking on four jobs individually instead of in pairs would earn them more.

It would, however, also be the first time Aerith had found herself without company for any stretch of time since her last encounter with Sephiroth. A shiver traveled the length of her spine and she found herself tugging at the seams of her new black jacket, pulling it tighter around her body, and tugging the hood so it shaded more of her face.

So, it hadn’t been a dream after all. She’d come face to face with the devil himself.

And lived to tell the tale?

This was just part of what had been eating away at her for the better part of the last eight days since she’d seen him. Not only had he not murdered her on the spot, he had been relatively patient and cordial. Which made things, somehow, even creepier.

_Why did I call him o’wise Sephiroth?_ she lamented internally, scolding herself for her lack of clarity and forethought. Even if she had been dreaming, she’d have hoped dream-Aerith would have been a smarter woman in the face of the planet’s greatest adversary.

There were, however, more pressing topics to ruminate on besides her careless disregard for her own self-preservation. Sephiroth had called her information useless. Sephiroth, who Aerith knew could not commune with the planet, had insinuated her knowledge was _out of date._

He must be lying, she had reasoned. The voices of the planet could not touch him. They rolled off his back like rain drops, as she had so eloquently put it over a week ago.

And yet...

She sighed, rubbing the back of her neck. If she had only been full Cetra...these issues could have been easily avoided.

As it was, Aerith was all too aware of her glaring fault as a half human. The information the planet gave her came in choked waves. Snippets of things here and there, not all crystalline. It had taken her weeks to piece together the sliced up future the planet had delivered to her, and more weeks to figure out which parts came soon and which parts were far off.

She had, for instance, not been able to accurately predicate the demise of Sector 7. She hadn’t been sure who Cloud was until they had met; then her visions had elucidated some. Under the planet’s guidance, she had also refused to fight fate, at first at least. This had contributed heavily to the collapse of the plate, a regret that still gnawed at her conscious.

Were all of these things to come even still relevant? They had walked through the blazing white light, defied fate, and come out free. But how free was truly free?

Did her life still have to end?

Perhaps, Aerith should have been paying more attention. Sucked in her thoughts, she ignored the dark chuckles and licentious hoots of passing men, trotting towards her destination, the only flower shop in all of Wall Street.

She nearly bumped into him. In fact, the whole reason she stopped herself was because she had looked up in time to recognize the cross section of his halter strapped firmly to his bare chest, his trademark smirk just barely visible at the top of her vision.

_Shit_. Her gaze slowly lifted to meet those glowing green, Mako infused orbs. She felt her hood begin to fall back and quickly grabbed it, settling it back over her head. Even now, when her life might end, she could not afford to be recognized.

In the poor lighting of the alleyway, his pupils glowed a yellowish-white. They were catlike, almost hypnotic, and spoke eerily of Sephiroth’s inhuman nature.

Even so, he was every bit as breathtaking as she had thought she dreamed. Not just a devil, but devilishly handsome. How dare the planet make bad look so good.

_Ew. Get a hold of yourself, Aerith._

“Hello,” Sephiroth said in his smooth, liquid voice as she continued to stare up at him, mouth agape in disbelief. His smirk deepened. “I didn’t forget about you.”

_I wish you had._

“I thought we could continue our earlier conversation. I have a preposition for you.”

Aerith just stared up at him, mouth closed now. Where was all that suave calm she had exerted in their most recent battle? All those biting remarks about how he was wrong, and everything about him was wrong. Without her friends to back her up, all that courage had extinguished like the feeble flicker of a dying wax candle.

She was scared.

So, what was she supposed to do? She thought about screaming and running for her life, but he wasn’t slicing people in half or blowing things up yet, and she was afraid he would start if she made a run for it. Testing the waters, she twitched her leg backwards; immediately, his predatory gaze flickered down to her feet, and then back up to her eyes.

“Hey babe, is he bothering you?” A clearly inebriated man who reminded Aerith strongly of Johnny stumbled towards them. He scowled up at Sephiroth, who seemed to be completely unaware of the man’s presence. Unaware...or just didn’t care.

“Um, well,” Aerith began, still befuddled. The man nodded as though Aerith had said something substantial and turned back to Sephiroth. He craned his neck backwards to stare up at the top of Sephiroth’s head, wobbling unsteadily on his feet as he struggled to make eye contact.

They were garnering an audience. A whisper of excited murmurs rippled through the crowd. Aerith could almost feel the air becoming dense with expectation. Several people had already discreetly slipped their phones out of their pockets, prepared to record whatever ensuing fight they were anticipating.

Not good. Aerith tugged her hood as far down as it would go.

“Hey bud, you bothering her?” The man’s hand lifted, index finger prepared to dig into what looked like somewhere around Sephiroth’s collarbone. Aerith could see Sephiroth’s eyebrow twitch as he assessed the man’s intentions. The edge of his lips tugged downwards.

It was a simple, understated change, barely noticeable. But as Aerith couldn’t seem to look away from his face, it stood out to her with the same alarming vibrancy as a red flag. This man irritated Sephiroth.

The stranger’s hand began to fall in slow motion. Aerith wondered if today would be the last day of his life.

Before his hand could make contact, Aerith had squeezed herself between the two men, raising her hands palm up in a placating gesture. She was sharply aware of her proximity to Ye Olde’ World Destroyer; her back to Sephiroth, she was _nearly_ grazing his arm.

It was uncomfortably terrifying, she realized, being this close to him, being this close to _touching_ him. Her back to him was how he had stabbed her through the heart. All her instincts screamed for her to tear herself away from him, but she stayed rooted to the spot, determined to alter this drunk stranger’s fate.

Huh. There it was again. Fate.

“He’s not bothering me,” she said quickly, wrestling slightly with the drunkard’s weak attempts to get around her. Her nose crinkled as the full force of his alcohol infused breath wafted into her nostrils. While he grasped and clawed at Sephiroth, the glint in his eyes told Aerith he seemed to be enjoying his nearness to her body. Cantankerous, perverted fool. 

_Oh, please let this be over soon._

“I’m her bodyguard,” Sephiroth interjected, interrupting their pathetic tussle. He said it quietly...but there was a wicked venom laced into every single syllable. An unspoken, very powerful, very compelling, very _commanding_ threat that screamed ‘go away!’

Aerith stiffened, and she felt her impaired, would-be rescuer do likewise. His eyes widened; whatever face Sephiroth was making behind her must have been petrifying. The man seemed to be withering before Aerith’s very eyes.

The Johnny look alike dropped his arms. He glanced at Sephiroth, then Aerith, then the tapering alleyway, his only escape. Aerith could see his doltish cogs turning painfully slow as he decided how much of Aerith’s life, or more likely, body, was worth fighting for. 

In a flash of irrationality, she almost wished she hadn’t stepped between them. She almost wished she would have allowed Sephiroth to have his way, whatever way that was. Quickly, she squashed such thoughts.

“He _is_ my bodyguard,” Aerith reassured the man brightly, flashing him one of her Sector 5-famous sun lamp smiles. “I promise.”

“Well...if you’re sure,” he replied. She knew at this point the man had already mentally checked out of the conversation. His only concern now was getting as far away from Sephiroth as possible. He gave them one last circumspect glance before hobbling down the alley.

Aerith took her escape as well, putting as much space as possible between herself and her “bodyguard.”

The crowd that had encircled them thinned out; various passerby’s, mostly men, grumbled their discontent at having not witnessed an epic street fight.

“My bet was on the little guy,” one man announced as he and his friends meandered by, stating it as casually as though he were commenting on the weather. “It’s the ones you never expect to win that come out on top. Like the Colosseum champs—Cloud and Aerith!”

“Nah,” another man responded, “That guy was plastered. And besides,” his voice lowered and Aerith strained to listen. “The drunk guy was a pretty average height. Look at the size of the white haired dude. Man’s a monster. He’s what...like over 6 feet tall? And ripped. He didn’t look it, but you could tell he was winding up a knock out for the ‘little guy’. I bet she’s really his girlfriend. That’s why he’s playing it cool.”

Aerith rolled her eyes. How this stranger had come to such an absurd conclusion about her and Sephiroth eluded her. Nothing about their interactions had suggested any sort of romantic angle.

_People see what they want to, I guess._

“Would have loved to see him in action though,” the man continued. “He reminds me of that Shinra SOLDIER who passed away a few years ago. Sephiroth, I think?”

Aerith was not surprised the man had not assumed Sephiroth to be _the_ Sephiroth. It was strange, how fame worked. Sephiroth had been beloved across the world, in places and towns even Shinra had never seen, and yet even when millions of people knew you, your face, your name, even your sword—all those thing were easily forgotten, or not very remembered to begin with. Fame, even when written about in newspapers and recorded on television screens, was fleeting.

“He only wanted to sleep with you,” Sephiroth stated matter-of-factly, interrupting Aerith’s internal musings, “I don’t understand why you felt the need to _protect_ him.”

Ignoring everything about that statement, she glared up at him accusatorially.

“You got that from Cloud’s memories!” she said.

He knew, immediately, what she was talking about.

“Correct. Very astute.” he said, tapping the side of his head with an index finger. The sarcasm was _palpable_. “I thought you would appreciate me...appropriating your idea.”

Ugh. Cloud was her only bodyguard. She glowered at him fierc—

She glowered at him?

Aerith was beginning to wonder if she had some kind of latent death wish. She fervently hoped not. Despite her current attempts to seemingly tempt the devil himself, she desperately wanted to live past the ripe old age of twenty-two.

“Are you ready to discuss my preposition,” he asked, again exuding that sage like patience. “We’ve wasted enough time. And, as I understand it, you only have about four hours until your company expects your return.”

What a kind way of saying ‘I’ve been following you.’

People were beginning to grow curious again and Aerith was not prepared to deal with another would-be hero.

In that seemingly interminable split second, spurred on not by Sephiroth, but by her desire to avoid another attention grabbing situation, Aerith made a decision that would change her life forever.

Because if there was nothing Aerith could do to avoid her fate, nothing Aerith could do to avoid the Masamune’s cold steel tip, she would simply embrace reality.

Assuming what she hoped appeared to be her usual upbeat demeanor, she beamed up at Sephiroth, cranking the sun lamp smile up to a blazing 10.

His eyes narrowed in response, but that reluctant, understated half smile dawned on his face again. The same one from that night, eight days ago. Aerith wondered if this smile, which was so imperfect and lopsided, was a conscious thing, or if Sephiroth was unaware he was performing what seemed to be a genuinely human reaction to being amused.

_Hah. Sephiroth. Human. What a joke._

“Well, bodyguard, why don’t you escort me to work? We can talk about prepositions on the way there.”

“Of course. Ladies first,” he smirked, gesturing for her to walk ahead. He followed behind languidly, but his lengthy steps kept them at a shoulder to shoulder pace.

Aerith felt, she realized, _dwarfed_ near him. The commenting stranger had been right; Sephiroth was a monster, figuratively and literally. He towered over every single person they passed by; had they gotten separated, Aerith would have only needed to skim above the heads of her fellow grounders to find him.

“So,” she said, clasping her hands together behind her back. “Is this gonna be another one of your speeches about the world ending?”

“It may have some things to do with the _planet_ ending,” he replied briskly, correcting her.

“Which will happen because of you,” Aerith said, adopting Sephiroth’s earlier matter-of-fact tone.

“Incorrect. As I’ve previously told you, whatever information the planet has given you is mostly useless now.”

“You can’t know that,” Aerith rebuked stubbornly.

“Can’t or don’t?”

“Both.”

“Explain,” he demanded calmly, sounding as though he were using this moment to lead Aerith to the correct answer. At this point, Aerith had expected hints of frustration to color his tone. She was, after all, going out of her way to deny his words. Goading him on, almost. And yet, his voice remained impassive, cool.

Aerith’s brows pulled down at the middle, mimicking Zack as she assumed a face of both concentration and frustration. She wrestled with what information she should share. Any bit he could use against her—against her friends—would be devastating.

She decided on the simplest explanation. One that would share no more, and no less, than what she needed to prove he was the ‘incorrect’ one. One that would unravel the very fiber of Sephiroth’s being, challenge everything which he assumed to know about himself. One that she was half-sure would get her killed on the spot.

“You’re not a Cetra,” she quipped.

“I’m not? How _disappointing_.”

“Exactly, so there’s no way yo-,” Aerith stopped dead in her tracks, turning to stare intently at Sephiroth. Her eyes bore into his brazenly, searching for some hidden confusion or underlying devastation to suggest he had just received the worst news of his _existence_. Aerith was so preoccupied with this task that, for a heartbeat, she forget he terrified her.

“You’re being sarcastic,” she stated dully.

Sephiroth’s replying smirk was both thrilling and terrifying.

“You continue to awe me with your talent for rudimentary observation, Cetra.”

If only Aerith had had the resolve to accept death. She would have slapped that stupid grin straight into next Sunday.

“Perhaps,” he said, beginning to walk again, “it would be more prudent of me to simply tell you what I know.” He wasn’t asking her. Talking out loud, more like it. He stopped briefly, allowing her to match his pace, and Aerith felt like a child lagging after a disappointed parent or teacher.

She said nothing. For the first time, the strangeness of this conversation struck her. Had she been speaking to Cloud or Tifa or her mom or anyone she knew with any sort of familiarity, she would have made a snarky comment, or provided an encouraging statement.

With Sephiroth...she simply listened. None of the things necessary to build a sufficiently engaging conversation existed between them.

“Will you listen to what I have to say?” he questioned, walking in exactly the right direction Aerith needed to go. “Or would you like to tell me more things about myself?”

“Do I have a choice?” she asked glumly.

Sephiroth frowned at her. “What did you learn eight days ago? You always have a choice, now more than ever.”

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. He said so, and yet Aerith highly doubted Sephiroth would let her walk away that easily. 

“What do you want?” she scowled, doing her best to sound threatening. If he registered the change in her tone, he didn’t acknowledge it.

“Eight days ago you and your...friends challenged fate,” Sephiroth raised one hand, curling it into a fist. “You have already done more for the planet than even you, Cetra, are aware of.”

“But now...,” he turned his head to look at her, and Aerith was faintly reminded of a preacher preparing to deliver a well rehearsed sermon. “The planet is still in danger. A greater threat lies below.”

“Greater than you?” she interrupted, in part out of curiosity, and in part to wound his ego.

He frowned thoughtfully. Uncurling his fist, he stared at the palm of his gloved hand.

“Perhaps,” he acquiesced, slowly and somewhat unwillingly. Aerith couldn’t help it. She chuckled. He looked so...grumpy, admitting weakness.

His eyes flickered to hers when she laughed, and he smiled as if on cue. Not smirked. Smiled as though he _knew_ his self-deprecating acknowledgement had been humorous.

Aerith was immediately reminded of that moment on the highway, when she had told him everything about him was wrong. Sephiroth had bowed his head theatrically, acting as though he had been hurt and disappointed by her words.

Sephiroth, Aerith realized with a shock, was playful.

“Ok,” Aerith said slowly, glossing over the very human interaction they had just shared. “How do you know this thing exists?”

“Have you ever heard of alternative realities?”

“Sure,” Aerith said, not knowing where he was heading. “People write fiction novels about that kind of stuff all the time.”

He nodded. “I am not from this reality. And the time you are experiencing now has already passed in my former reality.”

Aerith’s mind went blank.

“You lost me,” she said.

“How did you know I would kill you?” he asked, again calmly, again as though he were leading her to the answer.

“The planet told me so,” she said, frowning.

“Because that future already passed,” he explained, “on an exact replica of this very planet, in a parallel reality. Undoubtedly, you’ve seen my...downfall. For a brief moment, we occupied the lifestream together, in that reality. I was able to learn many things caught within the confines of the lifestream. That is how I know this ‘thing,’ exists.”

Aerith didn’t respond, in part because she had no idea what to say. She had known this, she remembered. She had known Sephiroth knew of their future together, forever intertwined in the lifestream. She had glimpsed it in his eyes when they had battled, in those brief moments when their gazes had connected. Back then, it had only been a persistent feeling that he knew more than he should.

Clearly, she had been correct.

“As I’ve said before,” Sephiroth continued, “If the planet were to end, so too would her children. Now that we,” Aerith noted his self-inclusion, “have subverted this planet’s predestined fate, we are free to move forward in a way never before seen by any of our realities. The things your planet have told you no longer apply to its future. The threat that lies ahead cannot be stopped by any knowledge that has previously passed.”

He turned to Aerith again, eyes blazing. They bore into hers with an indescribable intensity. Passionate, but not romantically, or artistically, or sexually; the fire that burned behind them burned for something else, something Aerith didn’t understand.

“The planet _will_ end without our intervention. I will not allow it to happen,” he stated, sounding almost urgent.

They had reached the flower store. They stood in front of it, Aerith staring up at Sephiroth, Sephiroth looking down at her from underneath long, curling eyelashes.

“Will you help me...Aerith?” his tone had changed yet again. Sweet, crooning, seductive. Aerith faintly registered this was the first time he had used her name.

She was too preoccupied trying to fit puzzle pieces together to answer him immediately.

Aerith had made so many mistakes about the planet’s intentions. In the beginning, she had believed the planet wished for events to unfold exactly as they should. She had become passive to the whispers, allowing them to intervene as they saw fit.

Later, she had begun to interpret the visions as a plea made by the planet, a plea that had suggested they needed to defeat Sephiroth. Then, it had seemed to Aerith, that the planet was desperately begging her to change the future. Sephiroth had won in these visions, had he not?

He had killed Aerith, and while perhaps in some ways that had contributed to what he claimed was his “downfall,” in others, it had lead to his immortality in the lifestream. Sephiroth had all but become a god, never quite being absorbed by the planet, never quite losing his individuality. The lifestream, had, in part, become his victim.

And yet, if what he said was true, that very Sephiroth, that very god, stood before her now, staring down at her, batting eyelashes that were much too pretty to be a man’s.

How _could_ she trust him? This man, who was far more mature, and far more knowledgeable than the Sephiroth she had anticipated facing. Even if all of what he said was true. She could not know his end goal.

“I can’t trust you,” she whispered.

He frowned, though not unhappily. He looked thoughtful.

“I realize,” he agreed dryly.

“What if you kill me,” she said quietly.

“I cannot,” he interjected. “Your death would doom the planet.”

“What if you _destroy_ the planet,” Aerith continued as though she hadn’t heard him. “My friends. My family,” she whispered, voice choking off into silence.

“I could destroy the planet at this very moment if I chose to.”

“Maybe it’s not the right moment,” Aerith suggested absentmindedly.

“Perhaps,” he agreed. He was agreeable, Aerith realized, yet again surprised by this strange hint of humanity. He had not yet denied any of Aerith’s statements that were irrevocably true. His confidence didn’t obscure his logic.

“What are you thinking?” he asked abruptly. Aerith focused on his face again, finding his eyes.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said honestly.

“I believe I could obtain proof, if you’d prefer. Shinra may be involved in these things, as it often is with all things that pertain to the planet’s eventual, unnatural death.”

“Why didn’t you do that first?” she inquired incredulously.

“I can’t be certain they do. It was not something I glimpsed from the planet in my reality, therefore it is not something I know,” he said simply, shrugging his wide shoulders.

Something twinged in Aerith’s stomach; she enjoyed the width of his shoulders. They were broad. Powerful. And she enjoyed seeing snippets of what suggested a humane nature lay below.

She was enjoying Sephiroth, she realized, a dull panic swelling in her chest.

On second thought, she wished he would blow something up. It would make him easier to hate.

“If you can find proof,” she said, exhaling through her nose, “I’ll think about believing you.”

“I haven’t killed you,” he reminded her softly. “Is that not enough to suspend your disbelief?”

“Proof, Sephiroth,” she stressed, yet again speaking before thinking, addressing him by name as though they were more than mere enemies.

Great. Aerith was doing what she always seemed to do too easily; she was becoming comfortable with him. Elmyra had complained about it before.

It was Aerith’s nature to bond with people. The Cetra had been a friendly and open civilization; it was in her DNA.

First with Zack. Then with Cloud. Now with...Sephiroth? What was it with these SOLDIER boys?

Sephiroth smirked. She wondered if he had picked up on this slip of the tongue.

“Then I will meet you here with proof,” he concurred, tilting his head in agreement.

Before the awardice of silence could settle in, his eyes flickered to the doorway of the flower shop.

“You have three hours until your friends expect your return,” he said, looking down at her again.

She pursed her lips, desperately wanting to accuse him of being at fault for her lateness. Still, it didn’t seem wise, tempting fate.

She didn’t say goodbye to him. They weren’t friends, after all.

Instead, she rushed into the flower shop, greeting the owner brightly, but never allowing her hood to fall. The owner, a plump woman with cherry red cheeks, never questioned it. So long as Aerith’s work was admirable, the woman was content to take Aerith’s word on her (fake) name and identity.

“Sorry I’m late,” she mumbled, finding a large, vibrantly painted cart of assorted flowers and rolling it to the front of the shop.

“Don’t worry about it,” the woman said, cheery cheeks glowing. “We don’t have too much to deliver today. You can take your time.”

Aerith shoved the cart out the store, carefully rolling it over the threshold strip and onto Wall Street’s grimy, gravely, barely paved streets.

She was sifting through papers of delivery requests when the cart was swallowed by a hunkering shadow. She ignored its caster until it was evident he would not go away.

“Why are you still here?” she asked grumpily, finding the closest delivery location in her pile.

“I’m your bodyguard for today.”

“More like nuisance of today,” Aerith breathed, too quietly for any normal person to hear.

“I prefer bodyguard,” Sephiroth said, the smirk evident in his voice.

Of course.

Sephiroth was not a normal person.

Huffing, she ignored him and set off in the direction of her first delivery. His light footfalls echoed hers as he followed.

After a few minutes of silent walking, Aerith had to admit he was useful. His monstrous height was an attention grabber. People cleared the way for him without thinking about it.

And, after six flawless deliveries aided by Sephiroth’s inherent ability to clear a path, Aerith found the silence had started to irritate her. Irrationally, she thought. Making friends with the monster under her bed—or rather, behind her back—seemed like a bad idea.

Besides. The fact that he hadn’t killed her yet didn’t change the fact that he _had_ killed before. He was more than capable of dispatching of her now, if he wished.

“Hey,” she said suddenly. “How can I trust you when you killed Barret?”

“That was a _mistake_ ,” he said sounding testy, though Aerith had the feeling his irritation was directed inwardly. “Jenova has a mind of it’s own. I did not anticipate its interference. It works with me, but only so far as it cannot overpower me.”

Well that was succinct.

“Is Jenova stronger than you,” she asked, turning to flash him a confused glance. He scoffed.

“Hardly. The body I used to retrieve it from Shinra is a simple minded clone of mine, created by the company itself. It’s will is weak, and therefore able to succumb to Jenova’s more primal nature. It is not a mistake I will make again.”

Another thought struck Aerith at that moment.

“You were playing with us, weren’t you?” she murmured more to herself, only partially addressing Sephiroth.

“Hm?”

“On the highway. You could have killed Barret again. Easily. Any one of us, really. But...,” she frowned, glancing at him, “you didn’t. You were toying with us.”

“Perhaps,” he answered noncommittally, causing Aerith to scowl.

“Nevertheless,” he said slowly, “I apologize for your friend’s death, however brief it was.”

“I’ll pass that along,” she said sarcastically

“I‘m under the impression your friends would not be pleased with you for entertaining me as long as you have now.”

“I’m not pleased with me for entertaining you as long as I have now,” she said, pouting.

He laughed quietly and Aerith, frustratedly, found she enjoyed the sound of it.

“Why did you defend the drunkard?” he asked abruptly, avoiding the return of silence. “You never told me.”

Aerith shrugged, eyes unfocusing.

“I didn’t want to see him die.”

“I would have simply incapacitated him,” Sephiroth said, frowning.

“You’re so kind,” she teased him, sucking in a sharp breath as the levity of her own words struck her.

She was teasing Sephiroth.

_Umm, Gaia to Aerith, this is Sephiroth we’re talking about. Not Cloud. You know. Sephiroth. The guy who stabbed you in the back, LITERALLY, in another reality. Yeah. That guy. Stop making friends with him._

Curse her amicable nature. There was probably a fair reason the Cetra had all gone extinct, she thought darkly. Too nice.

“Anyway,” Aerith continued, “it’s better that nothing happened. I’m supposed to be under cover right now. Viral videos of you backhanding a man aren’t exactly discreet. Someone would have recognized me...and you.”

“Perhaps,” was Sephiroth’s only response.

They continued to walk in silence, Sephiroth frightening away people who would block their path, and Aerith cheerily delivering bouquets.

It was a relief to reach the last house, which wasn’t a house at all, but a floating outcrop of land that ran along the river between Sector 5 and 6. The older woman waiting to receive the flowers was familiar to Aerith; she had done deliveries for her before.

She seemed surprised to see both Aerith and Sephiroth ambling along the path to her small campsite of sorts. A bundle of planter pots, Aerith noticed, were lined up neatly by her feet. Most of them contained clumps of shimmering soil, and a few already had tiny green sprouts poking out from the dirt. Others had become home to the replanted remains of cut flowers from previous deliveries Aerith had made.

The woman greeted Aerith brightly as she unloaded the last delivery, a set of several large baskets of assorted flowers.

“I see you’ve brought a handsome stranger with you today,” the woman said, waggling her eyebrows suggestively while Aerith continued to remove baskets from the cart.

“Oh no,” Aerith said, laughing. “It’s not like that.”

“Oh...?”

“He’s,” Aerith looked back at Sephiroth, who was hovering in the background awkwardly, looking across the river, “my assistant,” she said mischievously, allowing a broad grin to spread across her face.

Sighing theatrically, she continued her farce, pretending to struggle with a basket, “If only _someone_ would help me.”

Sephiroth’s head snapped in her direction. Frowning at her, he closed the distance between them in three very long strides. His sudden proximity was overwhelming, and Aerith was again awed by his monstrous height.

“My apologies,” he purred, “I was admiring the view.” His eyes connected with Aerith’s and she, unwillingly, felt a hot blush unfurl across her cheeks. Damn this man.

Towering over both women, he leant over and plucked a basket from the cart, placing it near the planters in one long, elegant swing. He repeated this until all the baskets were neatly lined up; everything about him was so stretched out that he’d barely moved an inch to get from the cart to the pots.

All the while, the quaint little woman admired him discreetly and unabashedly, eyes grazing over the contours of his body when she was sure he was preoccupied, greedily eating up the shape of him.

Aerith was _almost_ envious of her guiltless little glances. Almost because it was hard to forget that Sephiroth was, well, Sephiroth.

When they were finished, the woman tipped them, an unusually generous gesture on her part, and they departed

“You have an admirer,” Aerith said absentmindedly, fanning through the small stack of money in her hands and pushing the cart against her hip.

“Hmph.”

“I should take you with me everywhere,” she frowned, again counting the bills in her hand. “She’s never tipped me this much before.”

“And you believe others would react similarly?”

Something about the question was vaguely baiting, Aerith knew. And yet, she bit anyway, like a greedy, stupid fish.

“Pretty sure they would.”

“Why?” he purred. Ah. There it was. Aerith felt, once again, the blood fanning over her face in a puce blush. Stuffing the money in a jacket pocket, she pushed the cart ahead of Sephiroth so he could not see her face.

“You’re you,” she gritted out, determined not to call him handsome. “They’re terrified of you. It’s like using the school bully to extort money from children on the playground.”

For the first time, Sephiroth snorted disbelievingly.

“Is that so?” he asked sarcastically. She could almost hear his eyes rolling.

“If you know the answer, why are you asking?” she grumbled, jaw stiff.

“Curiosity.”

“Curiosity killed the cat,” she retorted.

“If everyone thought similarly, no one would ask any questions, or learn anything.”

“Well, assistants aren’t supposed to ask questions.”

“Ah...you demoted me,” he sniffed, sounding mildly affronted.

“How can I demote you when I never hired you in the first place.”

“Hmm.”

Aerith took that as his assent, and fought the smile that threatened to spread across her face.

Unconsciously, they were yet again, walking at a shoulder to shoulder pace. Between these winding, abandoned, junk filled paths, the night time desert air was often colder than it would have been in a brightly lit city or town. The heat emanating from him was comfortable.

This day was giving Aerith an unnerving sense of deja vu. Except, Aerith was sure she’d never lived this experience before, in any time, or any alternative reality.

“I’m surprised we haven’t been attacked,” Sephiroth mused, breaking the brief silence.

“Oh, that’s not too surprising,” Aerith said, adopting a light teasing tone, “Not even the things that go bump in the night would go toe to toe with the monster standing next to me.”

“I’m not concerned for myself,” Sephiroth annunciated, a small smirk playing on his lips, “But, as monsters instinctively target weaker prey, I was sure we would have suffered an attack already.”

“Hey!” she protested, reflexively smacking his arm.

Before Aerith could process her actions, or even deliver the scathing remark that had come to her so naturally, she came to a halting stop.

This was it. This was the source of her deja vu.

Everything about this day reminded her of the first full day she’d spent with Cloud.

Oh. Goddess. He was like Cloud.

In _some_ ways.

Or was Cloud like him?

Who was Cloud, she thought, alarmed now. Which parts of him were him? Which parts were Sephiroth? Or Zack?

How was Sephiroth even here, standing near her, in the flesh? Who was she actually talking to? Him? Or another clone, like Cloud. These were important questions Aerith had not even thought to pursue. She had become too preoccupied with _enjoying_ him, because he, she thought sourly, reminded her of the men she enjoyed.

“What’s wrong,” Sephiroth asked quietly, coming unusually close. Too close, Aerith thought frustratedly. Way too close. His hair tickled her face while his eyes roamed across her features; not hungrily, or perversely, and certainly not concernedly, but calculatingly, looking for the source of Aerith’s sudden distress.

His slit pupils contracted with curiosity; in that moment, it was easy to forget he was handsome, easy to remember he was a monster. Inhuman. Animalistic. Instinctive.

“I’m fine,” she protested, leaning away from him. He relented, stepping back.

“Sephiroth, how are you here?” she asked.

“Be more specific,” he demanded.

“I mean, whose body are you wearing. Is it...a clone, like the one that killed Barret?”

“It is my own.”

“Like, the one you were born in?”

He chuckled softly. “Correct.”

Which only prompted more questions. If this was indeed Sephiroth’s body, _where_ had it come from. Was it from here...or from where Sephiroth had come from? And, if it was from this reality, where had it been? She would need to ask Cloud.

They walked the rest of the way back in silence while Aerith ruminated on the meaning of Sephiroth’s answers, and indeed, everything he had shared with her thus far.

By the time Aerith had returned the cart, it was 3 AM, and she was late by an hour. Yet again, Sephiroth waited for her in front of the shop.

And, yet again, he stared down at her, and she stared back up at him, looking past those curling eyelashes and into the deep pools of Mako she had become accustomed to seeing over the years, from various different boys, whose fates all seemed intertwined with one another.

“Would you like me to accompany you,” he asked, tilting his head slightly.

“So gentlemanly,” she teased.

The half-smile tugged at his lips.

“But no, I can’t risk them seeing you.” A little shock of excitement ran along her spine. This was something different. Aerith was dealing with the devil now. And she was doing it alone.

It was risky. Electrifying. Scandalous. _Tantalizing_.

“Proof,” she reminded him, before she turned to leave.

“Proof,” he agreed quietly as Aerith disappeared into the early morning fog.

* * *

“THANK GOD,” Barret boomed as Aerith slipped into the small hotel room from the open window. Around her, several different people sighed in relief.

“Sorry,” she said sheepishly, dusting off her dress, “Got sidetracked.”

“Get sidetracked less,” Cloud grumbled. His arm muscles were tense, and Aerith recognized his snappy mood as a projection of his worry.

“Sorry! I’m sorry,” Aerith repeated, attempting to look earnest and searching for his eyes. Their gazes locked for a moment and the tension in his jaw relaxed.

“Missed me,” Aerith suggested, winking.

A small smile tugged at Cloud’s lips.

“Not really,” he said, echoing his words from their fight with Sephiroth.

From somewhere inside their dusty, cramped room, Tifa coughed uncomfortably.

“We got food,” she said, pointing to bag of honeyed pork buns on the table.

Aerith nodded, then fished for the stack of bills in her pocket.

“I got money,” she said gleefully.

“They pay you all’a that?” Barret asked, flipping through the notes.

“Nope. A _very_ kind lady gave me a huge tip today.”

“What for,” Cloud asked, wrapping a bun in a napkin and placing it on the floor for Red XIII.

Aerith shrugged. “My natural good looks and irresistible charm?”

More like Sephiroth’s natural good looks and irresistible charm. But, seeing as he wasn’t here, Aerith would gladly take the credit.

Cloud snorted and Red XIII chuckled.

“You guys do anything interesting?” she asked, nibbling on a bun.

A pointed silence blanketed the group and Aerith looked up, searching her friend’s faces for answers.

“I saw Turks today,” Tifa said sullenly, “I’m sure they’re narrowing down our possible locations.”

“So, they still think we’re in Midgar,” Aerith mused.

“Which means we have to leave soon,” Cloud said firmly.

The ate in silence after that, then prepared for their daytime slumber.

While Tifa showered, Aerith took the time to needle Cloud, plopping down beside him on the floor, and leaning her head on his shoulder. He stiffened briefly, before his taut muscles seemed to melt under the warmth of her body.

“Never a dull moment,” he breathed, a small smile gracing his lips.

“It’s what you signed up for when you met me,” she quipped cheerily.

“Where do I un-sign?”

“Cloud!”

The sat in comfortable silence for a while before Aerith decided to make her move. She wanted her questions answered, preferably before Tifa finished showering. Unnecessary tension over a silly boy would do nothing to help the group.

And besides. Aerith really liked Tifa. Hurting her seemed like a crime against humanity.

_And yet you’re still greedy enough to steal away these moment when she’s not here._ Aerith thought bitterly, closing her eyes and burying her head deeper in the crook of Cloud’s neck.

“Cloud.”

“Hmm.”

“How exactly did you kill Sephiroth?”

“Threw him in a vat of Mako,” he answered sleepily.

Well that explained nothing. She would need to ask Sephiroth, she realized.

A soft snore told Aerith Cloud had dozed off, head comfortably reclined on Aerith’s. The shriek of the shower faucet closing also told Aerith Tifa would soon be out.

But Aerith was tired. And, no matter how hard she fought it, Aerith loved Cloud in some convoluted, mentally fucked way. So tonight, she would not fight.


	3. First Date

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sure many of you are aware of the Hebrew origins of Sephiroth's and Aerith's names. And indeed, the fact that FF7 draws heavily from Hebrew culture in some ways. I find that fascinating. 
> 
> Anyways.
> 
> If you all would like updates to this fanfiction, feel free to follow me on tumblr at https://bayonettas-left-eye.tumblr.com/. 
> 
> I'm currently writing, as of yet, unpublished Bayonetta and Netflixvania fanfictions as well. If you're interested in those series, and indeed interested in queer relationships in any way, feel free to be on the look out.
> 
> I do drabbles occasionally, but mostly, I don't, because time management. Right now, my black bags have black bags. I find writing ff for pleasure really takes the edge off, but I'm most definitely prone to making literary mistakes when I'm this tired. 
> 
> I don't think chapters are going to be too long for now, but honestly, I also split this chapter up from the length it originally was, and allocated a good deal of content to several other chapters, so I could be seriously wrong. So, maybe be prepared for really long chapters, maybe don't be, idk it depends on which way the wind blows, and what angle my foot points when I wake up in the morning. 
> 
> Nevertheless, I hope you all enjoy :)

### Sephiroth

A shiver—unbelievably—shuddered up along Sephiroth’s spine as he stared up at Shinra’s massive, towering head quarters. The building seemed to be leaning over him angrily, accusing him of all the past misdeeds Sephiroth had not meant to commit against the company. He had not meant to betray President Shinra, Lazarus, Zack, or even the wrinkled, haggard scrote that was Professor Hojo, and yet he had, simply because he had not known any better.

His defection—if one could call his untimely defeat at the hands of his, now, most powerful clone, such—had cost the company a couple millions of dollars. Sephiroth had been, after all, not just the greatest SOLDIER to have ever lived, but also Shinra’s greatest and most valued specimen. And Sephiroth had remained unaware of this for years, for, indeed, most of his life until he was just around 20 years old.

Too young, he thought dryly, and too unstable to have had any other reaction than to fall into insanity’s virulent grip.

The same building that was accusing him now was also reeling from the damage it had sustained during Cloud and Co.’s most recent adventures. Part of the building hung loosely from it’s upper left corner, illuminated now by the cresting morning sun, and tethered by only a few strands of twanging metal beams. It swung in the wind, its heavy mass tilting back and forth slowly; each sweep eroded what fragile fragments of steel kept the beams intact, and each sweep threatened to finally let go of the slab of concrete and glass, allowing it to plummet down to the ground below. Shinra had sequestered off a small approximation of what land would be destroyed by this event with neon yellow tape and burly orange cones; the tape was lined with bold, inky text that read out the company’s full name. Sephiroth thought it was a waste to have custom printed yellow tape, but what did he know?

He sighed, and his shoulders, which were broad and strong, heaved along with him. This very motion had caused the small Cetra’s eyes to ravage his body, and he had noted this animalistic reaction for future reference. Humans, even half-humans, were easily swayed by the temptation of sex, or, for that matter, anything that even remotely aroused their more basic desires.

Sephiroth knew this well because Sephiroth was also half-human and Sephiroth also experienced these desires. He did not disdain the young woman for having reactions that were simply human. His partly human body, which he wore now, had reminded him on odd mornings that he too was a victim of biology.

Just then, a small platoon of Shinra Troops stampeded past him, marching in perfect formation. Their overseeing officer barked out a short line of orders that Sephiroth ignored, and they turned to greet him, bowing their heads almost reverentially. The officer groveled at Sephiroth too, squeaking out a trembled “good morning,” and hurrying to follow his diminutive squad of quivering men.

This had been Sephiroth’s experience for the last eight days, ever since he had chosen to reside within the Shinra headquarters. His human body, which he had reclaimed with some reparations from Jenova, found things like showers, bedding, food, water, the toilet, and other such mortal things a pleasure and necessity; while Sephiroth could have contented himself with deriving sustenance from his zombie-like clones, without a constant, direct connection to the planet, he found that doing so was slower and less reliable than simply procuring these necessities for himself.

Unfortunately these necessities had, in turn, made the Shinra HQ a necessity.

It had been disappointing, realizing only his conscious had attained an unimpeded immortality; his body, while immortal in the sense that it was frozen at 25 years old, had still not developed the sort of interminable resistance his mind had.

Another hurried clatter of footsteps made Sephiroth aware of the small human rushing past him. The front desk secretary—nose buried in a tottering stack of papers and files—blew past him, freezing only to turn and greet him quietly, blushing furiously, and dashing away. Sephiroth knew this secretary. She had been working here from before Sephiroth had disappeared, and had also harbored an unrequited attraction to him then.

What astonished Sephiroth the most was these people’s dedication to Shinra. From the 1st Class Soldiers to the janitors—every individual here had been made aware of Sephiroth’s presence, his identity, and the matter that his existence was not to be mentioned to anyone—not family, friends, not even between colleagues who had seen Sephiroth in the flesh. And every individual had been dutifully silent.

Many things, Sephiroth knew, hung in the balance for these people. Their Shinra sponsored homes, clothing, discounted food and other such amenities...keeping Sephiroth a secret was of utmost importance if one were to continue working for and thriving under the Shinra conglomerate. It was also of utmost importance if one and their family were to remain alive. Perhaps dedication was the wrong word to describe their predicament. Contractual obligation was probably more appropriate.

Sighing again, Sephiroth made his way into the building, pushing past the rotating doors, and methodically following a crowd of business employees to a tucked away hallway at the back end of the lobby, past a row of turnstiles. Business men and women, desk workers, and janitors tapped their Shinra issued ID cards against the the white rectangle to the right of each of the turnstiles’ spinning arms. A few threw Sephiroth hazardous glances, tiny beads of sweat popping out of foreheads and leaking down the side of cheeks.

Sephiroth enjoyed this attention. He enjoyed terrifying these people. He smiled wickedly at a young thin, spindly looking suit whose face brightened to a effervescent red, wobbling bow-legged away from the turnstile. Sephiroth had intended to terrify him, but the little suit seemed more aroused than anything else...well, no matter. It was still a satisfactory reaction.

The elevator to the 57th floor of the building was another diverting adventure for Sephiroth. The majority of the elevator cab had huddled to one side of the carriage, quaking in fear at Sephiroth. He had greeted them with a gentle tilt of his head and they had squished themselves further into their corner of the cart. They had allowed him to exit the cab first, trickling out after he had walked a marked distance away from the elevator hub.

Sephiroth had three rooms in the building—one on the 49th with other members of SOLIDER, one on the 65th, in the lower level of Hojo’s lab, and another on the 69th, as part of the executives’ group of amenities. Sephiroth often found himself spending time between the 49th and 69th rooms. The 65th’s was barren, clinical, unloved. Sephiroth avoided the lab to avoid Hojo, who he had not encountered since his return to Shinra.

Unfortunately, today’s task required him to investigate the lab. Navigating a maze of suits and neatly aligned cubicles, Sephiroth found yet another elevator, yet again tucked away into an obscure part of the office floor. A row of double doors blocked this elevator, which was even larger than the usual spacious Shinra kind. Sephiroth tapped a unique code into the keypad to the lefthand side of the sliding doors, then stood stiffly as a spray of white laser like lights scanned his face.

“Wel-come, Sep-hir-oth,” a thin, wringing robot voice annunciated. The double doors unlocked with a heavy clang, puffs of steam curling up from the pressure releases in the upper corners of each door.

Sephiroth stepped inside the elevator, acutely aware of the camera spying on him, red light blinking tellingly. This elevator lead to Hojo’s lab. Hojo, if he was indeed there, which he most likely was, would be ecstatically awaiting Sephiroth’s arrival by now.

Sephiroth hated Hojo. He always had. His pursuits, which were often self-deemed as honorable, were ignoble excuses to tear life apart and stitch it back together in cruel, inhumane ways. Sephiroth had himself been a victim of Hojo’s dreams; born to two anonymous humans who had agreed to take part in Project S, he had been forsaken into _Hojo’s_ care upon his birth; lied to, toyed with, manipulated, from the his very first breath, all in the name of _science_.

Never mind that neither of his human donors would have been particularly good people. Whatever the agreement that had produced his birth, both had allowed him to develop to term, both knowing Sephiroth would not be a normal human, or ever live a normal life, and both had agreed to abandon him for what Sephiroth assumed was a large sum of money. They were probably as awful as Hojo, Sephiroth thought.

The elevator rolled to a smooth, silent stop, and Sephiroth disembarked. The lab smelled eerily chemical and bloody, though to the average person, the odor would have been veiled with the equally sterile scent of bleach. Sephiroth’s much more attuned olfactory senses could detect things a normal human would be oblivious too. Besides blood and chemicals, Sephiroth could also smell hormones, food, and unfortunately, even the defections of various unwilling experiments.

He sauntered through the lab, discreetly observing many of Hojo’s depressed victims of “science,”; experiments that sometimes screeched at him, sometimes banged on the reinforced glass walls of their cages, and sometimes did nothing but stare dejectedly at him with empty, glassy eyes. Some seemed barely viable, sprawled out on the floor of their containers, laboring to breathe. Other were full of vigor, running circles around cylindrical cages that were probably far too small.

Sephiroth wished to end all of their misery.

Climbing over sparking rubble and destroyed computer systems, he followed the cleanest smell he could discern from all this mess into a notably damaged room with two levels. Hojo was on the second level, an isolated, enclosed overhanging observation balcony of sorts with several large glass windows. His fingers wrapped away frantically at the noisy keyboard of his overly-large surveillance system.

Already aware of Sephiroth’s presence, Hojo peered through one of the spanning windows to look down at him. From this distance, his tinted glasses concealed his eyes, but a broad smile had spread across his saggy, crinkled face.

His voice crackled through a loudspeaker enthusiastically. It was unnecessary; Sephiroth could hear him just fine through the walls of his observation room.

“Sephiroth,” Hojo said sounding shamelessly gleeful. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Sephiroth couldn’t help it; he sneered. Hojo seemed impassive to it, if he had noticed it at all. The pressurized door to the observation deck slid open, an invitation for Sephiroth to enter.

Holding his head high, he climbed the stairs to the second floor, crossing the threshold into Hojo’s surveillance room without hesitation. Hojo spun in his office chair to face Sephiroth. His eyes grazed along Sephiroth’s stretched out frame cataloguing every inch of his appearance; past his dimmed glasses, Sephiroth could now see through to his eyes, which were crinkled upwards in a pleased imitation of happiness, and a bit deranged looking.

“Amazing,” he breathed as though Sephiroth weren’t there. Sephiroth stared at him impassively. Dealing with Hojo was a matter of steeling oneself to a man who looked at other humans the way an enthused Chocobo breeder apprised a fine specimen.

Leaning back in his chair, he clasped his hands together, twining his fingers.

“Again, my boy,” he said, coolly now. Sephiroth stifled the snarl that threatened to rip through him. He was not his ‘boy’. “To what to do I owe the pleasure?”

“I was wondering,” Sephiroth said, adopting a cool, somewhat amicable tone of his own. It was the very same one he used when persuading Cloud. “If you could... _help_ me.”

Help was the right word to use. Hojo needed his ego to be stroked, be flattered. There was nothing he reveled in more. Assisting Sephiroth would have him on high for weeks to come.

“ _Of_ _course_ ,” he drawled. Sephiroth did not miss the narrowing of his eyes. “ _Provided_ it doesn’t interfere with my work.”

This was the one admirable thing about Hojo. Even in the face of death, he was unflinching. Sephiroth’s ability to murder him was not more frightening than the thought of missing out on a scientific opportunity. He had his goals, and those were more important than anything else.

“It shouldn’t.”

“Then by all means, ask away,” he said, spreading his arms welcomingly.

Sephiroth folded his hands behind his back, standing staunchly in the doorway. Still, Hojo was not intimated by this act of dominance; Sephiroth had blocked his one exit way, and yet he remained unbothered.

“What came after Jenova?” Sephiroth asked plainly.

“You must be clearer, my boy,” he said, turning back to his multiple screens.

“There was another anomaly,” Sephiroth insisted, unsure if this was the truth. This knowledge of Sephiroth’s was broken. He had not been able to learn everything he should have in the lifestream; some things had simply been too stubborn to elicit from the planet. Other things too obscure, things that had not yet passed, at least in Sephiroth’s original timeline. Sephiroth was going out on a limb here. Bullshitting, if you will.

Hojo’s fingers danced away on the board again, before turning to look back at Sephiroth. Sephiroth noticed for the first time two images of the Cetra girl on one of Hojo’s monitors, though one picture seemed...different somehow.

Hojo followed his gaze, another seedy smile washing over his features.

“Breathtaking, aren’t they,” he suggested, staring longingly up at the Cetra’s image.

“They?” Sephiroth murmured frowning.

“The girl,” Hojo groaned almost reverentially, jabbing a long finger at the woman that very much looked like Aerith, “and her mother. _Ifalna_.” Sephiroth disliked the way his tongue curled around the woman’s name, crooning, wanting.

She was the different picture, though they looked very much alike. Ifalna was more mature, more hardened looking; the same beauty embodied by her daughter had been taken and strained and stressed. Light stress lines framed her eyes, and the edges of her mouth were downturned in a quaint, delicate frown.

Even so, she was, as Hojo had said, breathtaking.

“Unfortunately,” Hojo continued as though Sephiroth had incited the conversation, “Her daughter is the last one of them in existence. The Ancients, I mean,” Hojo said, turning to look meaningfully at Sephiroth. “You were responsible for her protection at one point.”

“I remember,” Sephiroth said. Back when he had been a part of Shinra, Sephiroth had been made aware of Aerith’s existence. It had been of utmost importance to protect this one of the company’s valued assets, he’d been told, unaware that he too, was a valuable asset. Sephiroth sometimes wondered if that had been Shinra angle when he had been assigned to watch Aerith—slapping their two most expensive projects together so that the Turks could easily track them both.

Babysitting duty was how he had also come to be aware of Zack’s relationship with her.

Something twisted in Sephiroth’s chest for a moment; a hollow feeling like his lungs had deflated and his heart had pressed further into the deep reaches of his chest, pressed nearly against his back. Zack had always been kind to Sephiroth, even when Sephiroth had frustrated him with his cryptic actions and periodic disappearances. Sephiroth had thought that, maybe one day, they would have become good friends. Perhaps shared the relationship he had once enjoyed with Angeal.

Though these emotions flitted through him now, his face remained unfeeling.

Hojo, who seemed to be in a talking mood, continued on.

“It would be a shame if she weren’t able to continue her bloodline,” he looked at Sephiroth from over the rim of his glasses, which had slid down his nose a bit, “You would be a suitable candidate to father the next generation of Cetra, my boy. Your offspring would be something to behold. And she is an _enticing_ breeding partner.”

Sephiroth froze.

This was why he hated Shinra. This was why he hated Hojo.

Sephiroth _was_ the prized Chocobo, as much as the Cetra girl was. Not only was he one of their finest, most cherished specimens, but he was also a repository of mutated, uber powerful sperm. A potential to breed an entire army of little Sephiroth’s to rule the world with. He was an animal to the company, an animal to be used, and offered, without much thought for Sephiroth’s wants. Unfortunately for them, Sephiroth was far too powerful for either the company or Hojo to impose their wills upon now. If they had wanted to harvest his sex cells, they should have done so eons ago, during his hormonal teenage years.

“My stud services aren’t free,” Sephiroth snarled, breaking his calm countenance for the first time.

“Of course, my boy,” Hojo agreed in a tone of resignation, unshaken by this display of aggression, “It was merely a suggestion. Now,” his chair swiveled and he was once again facing his computer, “this anomaly. You remember Professor Gast, I take it.”

“Yes.”

“You were fond of the idea of him,” Hojo mused, a touch of bitterness coloring his tone.

“Hmph.”

“Anomaly B, as it was designated at the time, landed on Gaia about 500 years after the creature you know as Jenova. Our teams initially believed the smaller secondary impact near Jenova’s original resting place had resulted from the stray debris of space rocks Jenova had brought with it. Further research and better technologies eventually proved that the second impact had been created well after Jenova’s landing.”

“Because Gast was, at the time, the leading researcher in Project Jenova, he was assigned to investigate this ancillary incident,” Hojo gestured to the thick wall of text he had procured on his screen. “This looks like substantial information, but it’s very incomplete. The rest was stored elsewhere by Gast.”

“Where?” Sephiroth prompted, skimming the passages and frowning as the screen went blank.

“Forgive me, but to reiterate your earlier sentiments, this information is not _free_.”

“I could kill you,” Sephiroth threatened softly, irritated. “That _is_ free.”

“But you won’t.”

“I will,” Sephiroth promised, a hushed snarl building up in the caverns of his chest.

“Humor me, at the very least. I helped you. It’s only fair, my boy,” he folded his hands yet again, eyes narrowing. “And besides. You know I’m only the one that can help you in this curious little quest of yours.”

“Fine,” Sephiroth snapped. Hojo was, unfortunately, correct. He could have killed him. But that would have made the process of divulging information all that more arduous. Though Sephiroth had done so before, when he had endeavored to understand what Jenova was, having an inside man with instant access to files, and the knowledge to know immediately what to look for, shaved precious time off the efforts Sephiroth would have wasted having to painstakingly search databank after databank for clues and reports.

“I only have a few a questions,” Hojo drawled, twiddling a pen between his fingers. “Where _did_ you hide Jenova?”

Sephiroth stiffened.

“Don’t worry,” Hojo said placatingly, “I won’t go looking for it. I’m simply curious.”

“And you believe I’d tell you the truth?” Sephiroth asked with a derisive sneer.

Hojo frowned now. “No. I suppose not,” he sighed heavily. “Very well. How did you come to learn of this anomaly? And what is it you hope to learn with this information?”

“I’m simply curious,” Sephiroth echoed him with a wicked smile, “And I find myself running out of things to do here.”

“I see,” Hojo mused absentmindedly, booting the computer back to life. Several swift wraps of his fingers pulled up the massive wall of text again; another few, and a discreet printer that had been integrated into the wall that held his entire computer system buzzed to life, spitting out a slim stack of papers.

Sephiroth had not given any satisfactory answers. Hojo was acquiescing simply because, Sephiroth knew, he would want something from Sephiroth later, though Sephiroth was not sure what he could want except for his agreement to mate with the Cetra.

Hojo produced a manila envelop from under his desk and stuffed the papers inside. As he twined the red thread of the envelop’s clasp shut, he said, “Gast kept the rest of his information stored in an underground lab, here in Midgar, and a place called Icicle Inn.”

Sephiroth frowned; he had retrieved his true body from around Icicle Inn and been woefully unaware of his proximity to such valuable information.

“He fled there some years ago with Ifalna,” Hojo continued.

A jolt of surprise rocked through Sephiroth, though, as usual, he endeavored to remain inscrutable. A cruel grin stretched across Hojo’s face.

“Gast is her sire, you know. Aerith’s. He was a scientist through and through. He knew the value of the Cetra bloodline.”

Stiffly, Sephiroth took the envelop from Hojo’s hand.

“I do hope you’ll visit me again, Sephiroth. I think we can stand to benefit from one another.”

* * *

Sephiroth thumbed through the papers while he awaited the arrival of the Cetra girl. A plastic bag imprinted with the Shinra logo and full of various food items and drinks hung carelessly from his left forearm. Several passerby’s to the flower shop stared up at him in awe. Drinking in his height, his shape, the contours of his body and face. He had been accustomed to this, even before his defection.

Hojo had sprinkled in with the documents several tidbits of useful information, including the location of the lab, and the house Sephiroth would need to investigate at Icicle Inn. There were codes as well. Unusually generous, Sephiroth thought. It was an even greater indicator that Hojo wanted something from Sephiroth, and Sephiroth honestly wondered if that want was as simple as siring offspring.

His thoughts were interrupted by the telltale creak of the flower shop’s gaudy, painted cart. The Cetra girl was absentmindedly pushing it towards the shop, eyes downcast, face shrouded by the dark hood of her jacket. She, at first, walked past him; a little gasp escaped her, and the wheels of the cart rolled backwards, crackling noisily on loose pebbles of gravel and rock.

Stopping in front of him, she craned her neck backwards, and their eyes connected.

“You’re here.”

“I am.”

“With proof?”

He waved the stack of papers.

Her brows knitted together.

“That was fast,” she said dubiously.

“I have an inside man,” Sephiroth said, smirking.

One of her elegant eyebrows quirked, but she said nothing. In a matter of minutes she had returned the cart and was again standing beside him. He gestured for them to walk and they headed towards one of Wall Street’s many crowded outdoor dining areas.

“This is for you,” Sephiroth said, letting the plastic bag slide down his forearm and into his open palm.

“What is it?” she asked, automatically taking the bag from his hand and flinching as she did so. Sephiroth was not heedless of her aversion to touching him. Though it did not offend him, he wondered what it was that caused it. Did he revolt her? Terrify, perhaps? All reasonable reactions, he supposed. He had, after all, murdered her in another life.

“Food, water, and other similar things.”

“Thanks?”

“You‘re barely eating,” he explained. “How can you ‘save the world,’ while wilting away from starvation”

“Right.”

Sephiroth lead her through a maze of crowded streets and a series of, what Sephiroth thought, were unusually and unnecessarily placed stairs. He had to walk slower than usual for her to keep up; every single step of his was three for her.

“What did you tell your friends today?” Sephiroth asked as they passed a noisy group of drunk men. One reached out hungrily for her and Sephiroth smoothy slipped between them. The motion had been so fluid she hadn’t even noticed the man.

“I told them I’d probably be late,” she shouted over the noise, “I wasn’t sure you’d be here, but I didn’t want them to panic.”

Sephiroth nodded, and, using his arm, carved a path for her. For Sephiroth, this was a significantly easy task. People intuitively cleared the way for him. Sephiroth had reasoned that some latent instinct must have warned most people when danger was approaching...or that Sephiroth himself just looked particularly intimidating.

They eventually picked their way to the Honeybee Inn, where Sephiroth held the door open for her, gesturing for her to enter. She jerked to a stop at the doorway, eyes climbing up the exterior of the building to ogle disbelievingly at the Inn’s neon purple sign.

“No,” she gasped as an impatient couple barreled past them. “I can’t go in there looking like this,” she hissed up at him, gesturing to her clothes. It was not her usual dress, Sephiroth noted for the first time. She was wearing a light blue pair of fitted jeans; her shirt was concealed by the same black jacket Sephiroth had seen her in yesterday. She looked fine to him.

“You can,” Sephiroth said calmly.

“Sephiroth, this is the Honeybee Inn!” she whispered angrily, “In case you didn’t know, they _require_ formal or semi-formal wear.”

“They don’t,” Sephiroth contradicted her. “That’s just what one normally wears here.”

“Sephiroth!” she protested.

“You look fine,” he said impatiently.

“Come on!” a man behind her shouted angrily. “Go in or get out of the way.”

Smirking Sephiroth tilted his head towards the doorway. Groaning defeatedly, she marched past Sephiroth with a huff. A small smile played on his lips.

She was, at times, he was learning, a bit dramatic.

### Aerith

The Honeybee Inn was _freezing_. The air conditioning had been cranked up to unbearable. Aerith couldn’t remember what the temperature had been like the last time she was in here. She had been wrapped in her expensive, gaudy red dress (unfortunately abandoned in Don Corneo’s mansion) and the center of attention. Men and women alike had gawked at her openly. Even Cloud had struggled to hide his attraction to her.

Back then, the only temperature she had felt was the heat from being so damn admired.

Now, she was cowering in Sephiroth’s shadow, avoiding the gaze of the Inn’s many judgmental patrons, and hoping the women who worked here would not recognize her. Sephiroth had followed her inside, but she had quickly dawdled behind him to hide in his shadow. She stared astutely at the heels of his boots, nearly colliding with his back as he stopped at the counter.

She was curious to hear what he would say. This seemed like a planned pitstop in their night. Peering around his frame, she recognized the smooth, baby faced concierge that had greeted Cloud and her their first and second times here.

He was batting his eyes prettily at Sephiroth, who seemed oblivious, or, at the very least, uninterested. Another suitor to add to his list, Aerith thought, remembering the client who had tipped her heavily because she had been smitten with him.

“Do you have a reservation, sir?”

“I’m here on a special one made by Rufus Shinra,” Sephiroth stated dryly. The concierge’s brows shot up, and his face almost blued. He tapped through the little tablet on his desk, eyes scanning frantically for the Shinra name. Before he could open his mouth again, Sephiroth seemed to produce an ID card from thin air. Handing it off to the young man, Aerith watched in amazement as he scanned it and it returned an approval.

“Right this way, sir,” he squeaked, gesturing to a waiting hostess who seemed equally awestruck. Instead of leading them through the lobby’s magnificent black, marble-like doors, she turned at the stairs located to just the left of the main entryway. They ascended to the third floor and down a long hallway, stopping at the 6th set of doors to the left of them.

“H-here we are,” she said, flashing a bright, but shaky smile at them. She pushed open the hefty double doors, which were similar to the lobby’s, and Aerith stifled a tiny gasp.

These were the very expensive private booths; in the shape of half a honeycomb and encased on three sides by tinted, one-way glass, they overhung the dance-floor below, superseding even the second floor balconies, where socialites like Madam M and Chocobo Sam often ventured. The hexagon table in the center of the room was complimented by a semi-hexagonal black-and-red couch, similar to the set up Aerith had been seated at for Cloud’s performance. It wrapped around almost the entire table, save for the part which faced towards the glass, allowing patrons to view the entertainment below.

Small, honeycomb shaped shelves hung along the walls, each containing a candle which twinkled happily at Aerith. A delicious aroma floated throughout the room; a combination of several floral scents recognizable to Aerith, along with some other perfumes she could not identify.

Oh. Aerith could not afford this. She glared venomously at Sephiroth’s broad back, wishing the heat from her stare could burn holes through his polished leather jacket. She knew it. She had known it all along. The man was crazy. Bonkers. Nutso. Completely out of touch with reality.

Sephiroth and Aerith each settled on opposite sides of the couch, leaving the center piece of the sectional empty. The hostess shot them a perplexed look before sliding two overly-large menus in each of their directions.

“Enjoy,” she piped with faux-enthusiasm, ogling at them one last time before yanking the double doors shut.

Aerith settled her bag of Sephiroth-delivered Shinra goodies next to her, hugging her torso tightly as the cold of the room enveloped her. She glared at Sephiroth, who had peeled his gloves off and proceeded to lazily thumb through the menu; his huge hands, she noted, were strangely soft and elegant looking. The sight of him doing something so _normal_ would have been hilarious if Aerith had not been so preoccupied with how very poor she felt.

He sighed.

“Is something the matter?” he murmured, continuing to flip through pages.

“What are you _doing_!” she stressed, scowling. 

“Browsing the menu.”

Aerith rolled her eyes and groaned.

“I can’t afford any of this,” she jittered, pushing her menu towards him so that it plowed into his, causing the flat edge of his menu to stab into his unclothe chest.

“I _also_ have a menu,” Sephiroth said dryly.

“And now you have mine,” she huffed, pouting and folding her arms across her chest.

He shut his eyes for a moment; Aerith was keenly aware of the half-smile he was attempting to subdue. When he opened them again, he was looking up at her from underneath his long, curling eyelashes. Again, as if by divine will alone, a glossy, black and gold rectangle seemed to find its way into his lifting hand without him so much as digging into a pocket or pouch. Aerith could clearly see the elevated silver text on the front of the card; it read out a string of numbers, alongside the words “Business Gold,” and “Rufus Shinra.” A credit card, Aerith realized.

“You don’t _have_ to pay.”

Holy hell, where was he getting this stuff?

“Unless you want to?” he suggested, smirking.

“No!” she protested immediately, and the half-smile unfurled completely across his face.

“Well then,” he said, pushing her menu back to her. “Order.”

“Anything?”

“ _Anything_ ,” he said cavalierly.

“For real?”

Sephiroth paused then. It was the closest Aerith had ever seen him come to losing focus in the very brief time they had spent together; it was also fleeting, almost imperceptible unless one was truly scrutinizing the man, and Aerith could not be sure that what she had seen was real.

He blinked at her once.

“Yes, for real.”

### Sephiroth

“What are you thinking?” Sephiroth asked the Cetra girl. She was staring at the many tall plates of food in front of her in a passive sort of consternation. She had pushed her hood back, uncovering her face when Sephiroth had promised he would warn her if the waitress were to approach the room; he could clearly see the way her eyebrows knitted together, the delicate frown that threatened to pull down at the edges of her mouth.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen this much food in my life,” she mused into a rotating plate of sushi.

“Humph.”

“And,” she said, a diminutive grin playing on her lips. She laughed quietly, then turned the full force of her brilliant smile on Sephiroth; Hojo’s words bounced around in Sephiroth’s skull. _Breathtaking_ , _aren’t_ _they?_ “Watching you eat has got to be the most surreal thing I’ve ever seen.”

Sephiroth frowned.

“N-not,” she said, raising her hands mollifyingly and backtracking, “that there’s anything wrong with the way you eat. It’s just,” she looked down, dropping her hands so that they folded neatly on top of her lap. “It’s so... _normal_. And you’re Sephiroth.”

Sephiroth’s frown deepened and she scowled at him.

“I dunno. It’s hard to explain. You’re...not a regular person,” she said shaking her head.

“Perceptive,” he quipped.

“What I _mean_ is, it feels like you’re so removed from a normal life that it doesn’t feel like you’d do normal things. You’re a hero. And a world destroyer. A 1st Class SOLDIER. And a half-alien. A god, maybe.”

“Hmph.”

She rolled her eyes but continued on.

“You could kill me if you wanted to.”

“I could,” Sephiroth confirmed.

“But you’re sitting across from me right now with about three times the amount of food I could fit in my entire body, chewing on calamari while we watch half-naked women in bee costumes run around on stage flapping their arms.”

“Correct,” Sephiroth said, stabbing another piece of fried squid with a fork.

“It’s surreal,” she repeated.

“Hmph.”

“Is Rufus Shinra the inside man you were talking about?” she asked, finally picking at a roll of sushi with porcelain chopsticks.

“No.”

“Then how come you’ve got his credit card?”

Sephiroth debated for a minute on how much of the truth she needed to know. If he were to have her trust him...the whole of it, he decided.

“I’m currently residing within the Shinra Headquarters with what Rufus Shinra thinks is his permission,” he explained carelessly as her mouth popped open in a little ‘o’. “I have full legal access to almost every amenity available to him...and then some,” he added cheekily. Rufus Shinra’s tiny, infantile corporate means paled in the face of Sephiroth’s sheer willpower to do...well, almost anything.

“He just...said ok? Like that? You _killed_ his dad. Or, at least, your clone did...”

“No, _Shinra’s_ death was _my_ choice,” Sephiroth confirmed. “And, the new President Shinra is pleased with my return,” he mused. “I’m one of the company’s most valued possessions. And I’m one of only two truly expensive investments they still own.”

“You can’t mean that,” the Cetra balked.

Sephiroth quirked an eyebrow.

“That they own you,” she protested.

He snorted.

“I am _considered_ Shinra property. They cannot _make_ me do anything, but by paperwork, I’m a proprietary product of the company. Matters concerning myself are supposed to be dictated by them: what I wear, where I appear, how I am to speak, who I am allowed to procreate with, who may request my body or services, and what all of these thing would cost were another company or wealthy individual to require me in some way. The list goes on.”

“How is that legal?”

Sephiroth shrugged, nibbled on something that tasted vaguely like pork. “Midgar was made by Shinra; all the arbitrary rules this city abides by are simply dictions of an overly-large, overly-ambitious company that’s lost sight of it’s true place in the world.”

“They only believe they ‘own’ me because they believe their inane rules loan them some sort of unearthly powers over the planet. They truly believe themselves to be something like the mako that flows through the veins of the very ground we walk on. It’s absurd,” he finished, dropping his hands.

“You said you were one of two they still owned,” she said slowly. “Where’s the other one?”

Sephiroth leveled his gaze at her. Something about the way her eyes flashed made him believe she already knew the answer.

“The other one is currently sitting across from me,” he said curtly.

Aerith stared at him wide eyed. Her mouth moved silently as she recited their conversation. He could have read her lips...but he watched her eyes instead, which were verdant, pleasant to look at, and currently, Sephiroth decided, far more telling of the emotions roiling within her. A slow dawning realization seemed to be seeping into them. It was melancholic, desperate, panicked.

She started swallowing in the quick sort of successions that suggested she was either choking or panicking. Her fist curled around a napkin, grasping at it for support and her eyes glazed in a way that suggested she was far off in thought.

Then, one fat, salty tear rolled down the right side of her face. And then one from the left. And another. And another. And eventually, small, silent little sobs trembled up her lithe frame.

Oh. Oh no. Sephiroth was _not_ good at these things.

He wracked his brain at a million miles a minute, searching for the right thing to do, drawing on foggy human memories from his past with Angeal, and Genesis, and Zack. Had he ever been a comforting person? He wasn’t sure. Between himself, Genesis, and Angeal, he was confident that it had always been Angeal who had provided words of wisdom, comfort, and guidance. Genesis had always been too caught up in his own reflection to care much for how others felt, and Sephiroth had been markedly younger than the other two, and not quite so experienced at life.

So then...what would Angeal do? Ask her what was wrong, maybe?

Sephiroth turned to look at the girl, whose watery eyes jumped up to meet his gaze, the words catching in his throat as he ruminated on how very uncomfortable he felt. He could see his reflection in those eyes; frowning and impassive, as he always endeavored to be.

_She_ smiled apologetically at _him_ , though Sephiroth was quite sure he was at fault for her current state of being. Dabbing her tears away with the crinkled napkin—Sephiroth pushed the rest of his in her direction—she said, “Sorry. There’s never been a point in my life where I’ve been...free. Not even now.” She chuckled and Sephiroth was relieved to see some of her usual cheer return to her eyes. “Today at 11, Aerith Gainsborough, Shinra’s most wanted.”

“But, you are free,” Sephiroth said, contradicting her a little too earnestly; a hint of subdued madness colored his tone, he thought, and he reigned in some of his excitement. This had been the driving point of his entire life. _Freedom_. They were the same, he thought. She _had_ to understand. She _must_ understand.

“I know you think that,” she said slowly, carefully, her voice still thick from her silent sobbing. “But I’m not you. I can’t just wave ’hello,’ and have my enemies cower in fear. I’m not,” she waved to Sephiroth’s torso, “big and strong. I don’t terrify anyone,”—Sephiroth, personally, thought otherwise—“I can’t hold my own in a fight very well. Everyone thinks I need to be protected. I know my friends. Every time we split up like this, there’s the fear _I_ won’t return.”

She sighed heavily.

“I can ensure Shinra does not harm you,” Sephiroth suggested promptly. It was the best he could do. Words of comfort, he noted, would need to be learned for their future interactions if he were to make any sort of impact on her.

“You _will_ ,” she stressed, “because you need me now. What happens after that?”

And to that, Sephiroth had no answer.

### Aerith

Aerith had sunken far enough into the couch that she was sure it would swallow her soon enough. She wished it would. Maybe if she just scooted a little lower...

Sephiroth pushed another plate towards her, and without protest, she picked at it distractedly. The plate was backdropped by about a dozen glasses of icy cold soda pop. In the chilled room, they had remained perfectly frigid; slow melting wads of ice bobbed lazily on their dark, caramel colored surfaces. Sephiroth had insisted she needed some sort of source of sugar to combat her sudden fit of fatigue, panic, and choked sobbing; he had, Aerith thought, forgotten she was normal-people-sized and could not fit twelve 16-ounce glasses of liquid in her body.

“I’m not _that_ fragile,” she muttered.

He shrugged and “hmph’d,” and for one brief moment, Aerith easily envisioned Cloud sitting in his place, reacting in the very same manner.

Aerith had anticipated a...colder reaction to her mini-meltdown. She had expected him to scowl, or smirk, or tell her she was being melodramatic. He had instead frowned deeply and gone very quiet; his words had not exactly been comforting, but neither had they been condescending. At one point, he had even shoved the stack of napkins near his elbow to her, and Aerith had gratefully sopped up the thick mixture of tears and snot that had rolled down her face.

_Who wouldn’t react that way?_ she wondered, feeling her brows crumple as the thought niggled at her brain.

Pulling herself upright, she reached for one of the sodas. She shuddered as she gulped in one cold mouthful through a yellow-and-black striped straw and wondered if _everything_ in this place was honeybee themed.

Sephiroth was idly staring at the performance below. It had been awe-inspiring to see him, somehow elegantly, vacuum up an amount of food Aerith could have only ever dreamed of consuming. Watching him as he had delicately decimated plates of meats and seafoods and vegetables had never lost its sense of surreality. All done so cleanly, all done so politely. He had been the epitome of proper dining etiquette.

Aerith’s chattering teeth pried his attention away from the ongoing entertainment. He watched her with what Aerith believed was a concerned frown...it was hard to tell with him. It could have just as easily been a disinterested frown, or an unhappy frown, or even just a frown for the sake of showing some semblance of humanity, but Aerith did not know him well enough to decide which of those things it was.

“I would offer you my coat, but I believe it would make you uncomfortable,” he said.

She glanced at his bare chest, wondering if their thoughts were aligned, or if Sephiroth was imagining her uncomfortable for an _entirely_ different reason.

“Offer me your information instead?” she suggested with a small smile, and he smirked in return. Sidling closer to the center of the sectioned bench, he placed the mustard colored envelope on a clear, food-and-drink free portion of the table. Following his lead, Aerith shuffled closer to the middle sectional. Their elbows almost touched now, and she shuddered at the proximity.

He was warm, for sure. Heat rolled off of him in waves, and Aerith entertained herself with envisioning a mini furnace wearing a Sephiroth themed wig. But heat be damned, he was frightening. Feeling safe had been foolishly easy when they had been separated by the long, empty stretch of couch. Unreasonable, Aerith knew. There was little that could protect her from Sephiroth, except maybe Sephiroth _himself_. But distance had made his presence...digestible.

Now, she was forced, yet again, to acknowledge his hulking size, the way he dwarfed her in nearly every aspect of life. Even his hair looked better, she realized ruefully.

He also smelled _wonderful_. Like the kind of cologne whose whiff made one weak in the knees, and the sorts of flowers that one presented to lovers on special occasions, and the variation of spices that made one crave the sweet deliciousness of cinnamon buns and and brownies and ginger snap cookies.

And while Aerith hazily daydreamed of all of these things, and some forbidden things, like stolen kisses on her neck, and chest, and stomach, and the press of something warm and hard against her thigh, and also stupid, silly things like suggestive cans of whipped cream in warm homely kitchens, she saw _it_.

The pale little freckle, directly above the left end of his upper lip. Easy to miss, if you weren’t paying attention, or too far away. But definitely there.

And, Aerith realized, all this time she had been thinking of Sephiroth as too _perfect_ to be human, to whatever degree of human he was. Too perfect for flaws. (Though, she admonished herself, one should not really consider natural deviations in skin tone to be a flaw.) Too inhuman for things like eating, she remembered, thinking of the delicate food consumption that had so awed Aerith with its surreality.

Aerith, so eaten up in these thoughts, so focused on that silly little freckle, missed when Sephiroth turned to stare at her blankly and unblinking. Missed how his eyes bore into hers, trying to elicit a reaction. Only stirred when the left edge of his lip pulled down in a little, troubled frown.

“Is something the matter?” he muttered, and his peppermint smelling breath threatened to drown Aerith in a whole host of other, savory daydreams.

“You have a freckle above your lip,” she stated flatly, not really sure why she said it.

His frown deepened, and Aerith, in turn, frowned back at him. They spent, she thought, and uncommon amount of time frowning at one another.

And they _continued_ to frown at each other for a small while, before he turned to undo the envelop’s red string, and Aerith watched, with a newfound interest, the way he moved. Graceful, organized, like he had never known there were other ways one could behave or act. Like his whole life had been painstakingly curated, each strand of hair on his head carefully arranged, each scent of his body judiciously chosen; his bare chest, lean and muscled, open for the world to see; his tall frame, accentuated by the long, black leather coat he wore; his neutral expression, the hint of a smoldering gaze always floating just beneath his thinking eyes.

Each thing so proper, each thing so created, down to his very ‘cellular structure.’ Without him ever having to share it, Aerith watched behind her eyes as his life history unfurled before her. A boy, taught only to be proper. An adolescent, taught only to fight. A man, knowing only war and heroism. A defector, seeking only vengeance.

Aerith shook these thoughts from her head. She could not humanize him, not now, maybe not ever. But she could sympathize with him. That is what humans did, that was what she would do, even if only sometimes, when he was behaving particularly well.

If they made it that far into...whatever it was they had going on between them, she realized with a jolt, remembering for the first time that her usefulness to Sephiroth might one day expire.

He upturned the envelop and the same slim stack of papers he had been holding in front of the flower shop slipped out and into his waiting palm. Tossing the envelope aside, he aligned the stack carefully, gently, and then offered them to Aerith. As he did so, their bare fingers just barely grazed, and a shock like electricity blazed up the length of Aerith’s arm, straight into her head.

A deep, muddied pool of thoughts and feelings inundated her mind. And Sephiroth...was everywhere. His thoughts, feelings, his imaginings, the things he had seen, and was seeing. They melded together with Aerith’s own conscious, and for a brief, but seemingly never ending moment, Aerith could understand bits and pieces of Sephiroth. He was there, but quiet, muffled, like she was listening to him shout at her through several different walls of concrete. He was everywhere, and everything, and yet nowhere, and nothing, all at once.

Aerith let out a gasp like someone had roundhoused her and Sephiroth snatched his hand away in response, the papers ruffling from the strength of his retreat.

“My apologies,” he said stiffly, dropping his bare hands so they were hidden under the table.

“No!” Aerith protested. His mind had been suctioned out of her with the broken contact. And she had gleaned so very little of him.

He was excited, she had surmised. Worried. She wasn’t sure about what. He had been thinking about the color green. Not sure why. He wanted more calamari. Other things too, but they had been too difficult to understand, too complicated, too fast moving, too hidden by Sephiroth’s controlled mental strength, and his alien, somewhat godly consciousness. He was, on some level, unreadable because Aerith did not understand him well.

Like the _Planet_. How _was_ this possible?

“How did you do that?” she breathed, fingers clutched a little too tightly around the papers.

“What, precisely, is that?” he murmured. Aerith’s stared at him. Did he...really not know? Was he lying to her?

If he wasn’t...Aerith could not risk revealing this newfound power, this newfound connection between them. She could not risk this one thing that seemed, by all accounts, to be an advantage.

“Never mind,” she said quickly.

And, of course, he pressed her.

“I am _not_ oblivious, little Cetra,” he purred.

Aerith steeled herself against his smoldering gaze and raised her chin defiantly. She would mislead him, and she would do it well.

“Well, obviously you are,” she scowled, and he smirked. He smirked, she realized, whenever she expressed any sort of resilience towards him. Clearly, he found her attempts at bravado in the face of the devil entertaining.

“Enlighten me, then,” he offered in that same sultry purr.

She shrugged.

“You static electrified me,” she said flippantly, “but it felt more like being struck by lightning.”

She was careful not overact, not to over-exposition.

“Interesting,” he purred still, “I felt nothing.”

“Oblivious,” she quipped, laying the papers flat on the table. “Now tell me what I’m looking at.”

He was not oblivious. And clearly, he did not believe her.

“Very well,” he breathed, moving closer to Aerith so that their faces were merely inches away from one another; Aerith glanced at the little freckle, “Remember this, however; I have never lied to you and I do not intend to.”

“Yet,” Aerith corrected him. “And I’m _not_ lying,” she gritted through her teeth. And technically, she hadn’t actually lied to him. His thoughts had felt like lightning rocking through her body.

“Hmph.”

He leaned back, pulling the papers closer towards them.

“These are what scant documents Hojo retained from Professor Gast. They cover a secondary impact to Gaia, about 500 years after Jenova.”

Aerith leaned closer so that her arm brushed Sephiroth’s, intending to touch him in the guise of being interested in the papers. She frowned as she felt nothing. The faint flavor of _something_ tugged at her consciousness, as thought it were trying to reach her through saran wrap; still, her head was her own, as it had been mere seconds ago.

“I believe this anomaly, whatever it may be, will lead us to what thing endangers the Planet now,” he continued, sifting through the papers and bringing up one particular one from the butt-end of the stack.

“Ok,” Aerith said slowly, “so what do all these papers tell us then?”

“Not much,” he said frowning, “except for the locations of where we may find more information.”

He lifted the single sheaf of paper.

“Professor Gast stored the bulk of his work in two separate locations. A personal lab, under the Sector 5 slums, and a place called Icicle Inn. I suggest we focus on the lab first.”

Aerith noted his ‘ _we_ ’. Alone in public with Sephiroth was one thing. At least if he killed her, someone would see...she hoped. Alone with Sephiroth in an isolated, secret underground lab? Possibly even in the dark? No thanks.

Besides. The others would get suspicious.

“Sephiroth,” he looked up at her. “I need to take some of my friends with me.”

He frowned, but before he could protest, she continued on, “If this thing you’re looking for is real,” she shook her head. “If you’re really not the biggest, baddest monster on Gaia, my friends need to know. They’d _want_ to know. They’d want to help me stop it. It’s...it’s all our fate now, right?”

This seemed to catch Sephiroth off guard. He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, then nodded his assent.

“Very well. I, however, do not suggest you take Cloud.”

“Red XIII will come with me,” she said automatically, volunteering her friend without his permission. Well...he never had anything better to do anyway, right?

“And Tifa, possibly,” she tacked on. Just in case.

“Tomorrow night,” Sephiroth suggested and demanded at once.

“Tomorrow night,” she promised.

“I will be waiting,” he warned her.

“And I’ll be there,” she emphasized.

“Very well,” he said for the umpteenth time. His hand reached for the papers, and as he did so, so too did Aerith, knowing exactly why, and guessing exactly what would happen. Their hands collided and an ocean of him flooded her brain again; she did her best not to wince, though he still moved away from her.

He believed she disliked touching him. He was right, of course. He was convinced it didn’t hurt his feelings; something swimming underneath that feeling suggested otherwise, but the denial tasted stronger than the acceptance. She missed out on most of his other thoughts; he’d broken the contact too quickly, and, yet again, his mind was too complicated, too quick, and as of yet, too alien.

But it confirmed Aerith’s suspicions. She needed their bare skin to make contact for this...thing to work. She had, after all, smacked him on the shoulder just yesterday and suffered zero of the effects she had felt now, when their naked hands had touched together. Zero of the effects because they had been separated by a layer of clothing. In the same way that Aerith struggled to hear the planet past the chug of Midgar’s largely concrete and metal makeup, she struggled to hear Sephiroth past his thin layer of clothing.

And damn him, with the exception of his chest and face, Sephiroth was, almost always, mostly covered.

“Would you like to keep them?” he asked, interrupting her internal musing. He gestured to the papers with a quirked eyebrow.

“No, I...I just wanted to read them. I’m a fan of Professor Gast. But,” she pushed the papers towards Sephiroth, “It’s alright. I’m sure we’ll be going over a lot of his readings soon.”

“I see,” he mused, and Aerith thought she caught a glimpse of something in his eyes. Surprise? Curiosity?

How she wished to hold his hand, she thought humorously.

“Are you finished?” Sephiroth gestured to the plates of food. Mostly empty with the exception of the multiple glasses of soda. Had they really eaten that much?

“Sur-oh wait!” His brows lifted questioningly. She smiled at him sheepishly, lifting a single index finger skyward.

“Just one more plate of calamari.”

* * *

Aerith meandered down the lonely alleyway feeling unusually buoyant. Her tummy contentedly full and her mind preoccupied, the bag of Shinra goodies swung carelessly from her arm. Sephiroth shadowed her quietly, determined to see her through till her hotel. Like her friends, she knew he fancied her too fragile to properly defend herself.

However, very unlike her friends, Aerith was a commodity to Sephiroth. A means to an end. A path to his goal.

Except, for once, perhaps his goals had aligned with Aerith’s.

They had shared the calamari. He had been reluctant at first, but with some light encouragement, they had sat together closely, munching on delicious pieces of fried squid. She was sure it had made him pleased, but that was a guess based on the thoughts she had managed to read, and not on his carefully curated face, which only ever seemed to frown or smirk.

“Sephiroth?” she called tentatively; at 4AM in the morning, they were very much alone in the alleyway. Aerith’s worst fear, except that, surprisingly, she wasn’t frightened at all.

“Hmm.”

“You waited till after I finished my deliveries today,” she said, looking at him somewhat accusatorially.

He raised a single silver eyebrow.

“I missed out on another huge tip,” she grumbled.

He chuckled quietly.

Silence. And then.

“Sephiroth?”

“Yes?”

“You said this body was yours,” she stated, turning to look at him. They would be at the hotel soon.

He nodded his affirmation.

“Where did it come from? Cloud said he dropped you in a vat Mako. So...?”

“This body was stored near the Northern Crater by _my_ _will_ ,” he explained enigmatically; Aerith remembered she had known so from her visions. She had not, however been sure that it had always been there.

“I retrieved it from there. Jenova, which you must know is in my possession currently, assisted me in repairing it completely.”

“The Northern Crater...near Icicle Inn,” she mused quietly.

“Regrettably, I was unaware of the information Professor Gast had stored there,” Sephiroth admitted frowning.

“Ah.”

They trotted along in more silence. Until...

“Sephiroth?”

“....Yes?”

“Where’s Jenova?” she asked sweetly, expecting the answer he gave.

He smirked at her.

“As I said, I’m not oblivious, little Cetra. That, I cannot tell you.”

“Hmph,” Aerith said, mimicking Sephiroth’s usual noncommittal method of answering. A little half-smile tugged at his lips.

And, once more.

“Sephiroth?”

“....... _Yes_?”

She stopped and turned to face Sephiroth, who did likewise. He tilted his head ever so slightly, silently questioning her abrupt halt. The last slivers of moonlight washed over his clean features, illuminating every inch of his face in crisp, white light. He was every bit as beautiful as Aerith wished she had imagined. The little freckle over his lips was quickly becoming a favorite feature of hers.

“This body is real?”

“Correct, as I’ve said before,” he said sounding a bit exasperated.

She waved her hand at his left pectoral.

“Can I see myself?”

He frowned at her for longer than usual; it was profound, how this simple request had seemed to short circuit the breakneck speeds at which his brain ran.

Finally he spoke.

“You may,” he said slowly.

And carefully, Aerith raised her hand, fingers splayed, and pressed her palm firmly against the bare skin of his chest, closing her eyes as she did so.

Like the strike of lightning, she was slammed with the full force of his enigmatic thoughts. As before, some things seemed completely clear; other things gave Aerith the same impression one would derive from peering through frosted glass.

He was...content. Very full. Thinking about sleeping, even though it was unnecessary. He was excited about tomorrow. Confused about Aerith’s request when he felt so sure his touch terrified her. Something like sorrow seemed to flavor most of his feelings, though it seemed he himself was unaware of this sorrow. Prying through his memories was an altogether different beast; too difficult, too complicated, and too well protected for Aerith to discern. Yet, she thought determinedly.

At this moment, one would believe what would have stood out to Aerith the most was the human banality of his thoughts. They were, in almost every way, mostly normal. But it was not Sephiroth’s thoughts that stood out to Aerith now. It was not his plain wants, his confusion, or his more perplexing fancies, like his continued focus on the color green. In fact, Aerith forgot about all of these things as one new thing drew her attention away from these thoughts, like a bright beacon on a dark beach.

It was what she _felt_ under the soft, pink hills of her palm, so dwarfed by the musculature of his chest. Each pulse, each thud, pulling Aerith further and further away from Sephiroth thoughts, and deeper, and deeper into the very fiber of Sephiroth’s being.

So no, it was not Sephiroth’s perfectly normal thoughts that distracted Aerith. It was the hammer below his chest. The thud that drummed beneath her fingers. The very music of nature which swelled now under her palms.

The beat of a human heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boop, boop, boop.
> 
> Bump, bump, bump. 
> 
> Heart go bibbidi bobbidi Sephiroth titty.


	4. Beginnings, Part I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LMAO I accidentally deleted this chapter, and am immediately reposting it. I'm very tired. Apologies, I have no clue if deleting it will effect anyone in the process of reading it? Luckily, I save my chapters after posting, so yay for me!
> 
> ORIGINAL NOTE:
> 
> I'm writing shorter chapters after this everyone. I dunno how Ao3 tallies word count, but in Microsoft Word, this chapter is 30 pages and 11,000 words long.
> 
> So, I'm writing shorter chapters after this, unless you all want long chapters, or continue to want chapters of this length. Please let me know in the comments. 
> 
> I also had to divide this into two chapters, because, unfortunately, I won't have time to finish this chapter this week, and I would like to post something else this month, as I promised 1 to 3 chapters a month for this fic. Apologies, but my past work week was kind of ass, and this week might be much of the same, and also, I'm stressing because my insurance is about to be up :) 
> 
> Anyway, if you all find any mistakes, please let me know. I will be trying to go back and correct some errors in this, and previous chapters, by the end of the week if I have time. 
> 
> ALSO THIS IS IMPORTANT:
> 
> If you'd like, please let me know how you find Aerith's characterization. I based this Aerith on the fact that Aerith seems drawn to making friendships with people quickly, and would like to know if this is something you guys prefer, of if you'd like me to pull back a bit, and make her far more wary of Sephiroth. Thanks!

### Aerith

“No!” Aerith gasped as she slid backwards. Her fingers, like claws, dug fruitlessly into the metal surface beneath her, which groaned in protest as the beams elevating it crumbled into halves. She clung, slipped, and kicked her feet out just as the platform gave way with one final, wringing, metallic screech.

Before she collided with the ground below, a thick, sturdy arm wrapped around her waist and hoisted her up....and up...and up.

A swoosh of air escaped her lungs as the floor shrank away beneath her feet; soon, she was so high up that a wave of her hand would have grazed the lab room’s ceiling. Below her, a humongous, eldritch-looking monster ravaged the place, flinging chairs, tanks, and computer screens in a spread of directions. Its splayed white eyes, like bugged beacons of light, tilted skyward until they raked over the two figures floating languidly at the top of the room.

“What was that you had said?” her rescuer murmured, “I think it was, ‘I got this.’”

Aerith frowned, because looking back at Sephiroth would have meant resting the back of her head on his chest, and she refused to give him the satisfaction of gazing upon her betraying blush. As it was, the press of the right side of his body against her back was already doing wonders to her, even while she swung perilously from his grip. It was at moments like these that Aerith thanked the gods that she had been born without a penis.

“I totally had that,” she protested grumpily.

“Should I leave you to it, then?” Sephiroth asked, and Aerith stiffened as the ground began to draw closer.

“I said had! Had! Past tense,” she yelped, patting Sephiroth’s arm. “Tag in, tag in!”

“Hmph,” Sephiroth said and Aerith could feel the sear from his triumphant smirk burning holes into the back of her head. Her fingers dug into the fabric of his sleeve as they, yet again, scaled upwards. The monster watched them greedily. Snatching a halved chair from the floor, it flung it at their ascending bodies, missing by mere inches. Sephiroth hmph’d contemptuously, and Aerith’s gaze flickered to the Masamune lifting on her left. He pointed it at the monster defiantly and it bellowed in rage; a soft chuckle escaped Sephiroth’s lips, and Aerith struggled to ignore the little vibrations it sent running along her spine.

“Now,” Sephiroth breathed in her ear, “watch and learn, little Cetra.”

### 14 Hours Ago: Cloud

A testy wind flitted over Cloud’s skin and he shivered slightly. Above him, lights from the underbelly of Sector 6’s topside plate twinkled like stars in a bright night sky. He sighed and retracted more deeply into his hoodie, stuffing his hands in its pockets, and feeling mildly surprised when his fingers brushed against what felt like the discarded wrapper of an eaten chocolate bar.

They _really_ needed to start checking the clothes they stole.

Cloud was waiting on the hotel’s grimy roof; at 4AM in the morning, Aerith had still not returned. He had checked his (stolen) watch more times than he had cared to count, silently tallying each passing hour of her profound absence.

A slight frown pulled at the edges of his mouth and he toyed absentmindedly with the wrapper, trying, and failing, to organize the mess of thoughts that harassed him.

“Damn it,” he muttered to no one in particular, gritting his teeth as he did so. The wrapper crinkled in protest as his fingers twisted and crushed it.

Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.

Why did Aerith’s absence gnaw at the very core of his soul like his, like a rabid, obsessive wererat? Why did it create the gapping black hole that swirled and churned in his chest now? Why couldn’t he wait to see her smiling face, or gaze into her emotive eyes?

Why did it feel like he knew her? Like he had always known her? Like the very center of his being had once gravitated to her, had once revolved around her, like his very own, personal sun.

The sun. That was a perfect analogy for Aerith, Cloud thought. Her sun-lamp smile; her affinity for flowers; the way she seemed to drag everyone and everything into her orbit with a pull so irresistible that strangers seemed to fall in love with her.

Wasn’t that what Cloud was to her? A stranger? They had been friends for only a few weeks now. And yet...

They moved around each other like long-time dance partners. Every action of Cloud’s was perfectly complimented by every response of Aerith’s. And every inclination of hers was perfectly satisfied by every one of Cloud’s.

It was infuriating. Infuriating because Cloud was distinctly aware of the fact that he had not made the decision to become Aerith’s perfect other half. There had never been a cognizant point in his life where he had mentally devoted himself to her. It had simply...happened, the moment he had first laid eyes on her, topside of Sector 6. Seeing her...had felt like seeing her again, for some reason. Like he had been reunited with someone he had never known he was missing. And he had been unable to resist.

 _You can’t fall in love with me._ The words bounced around his brain. Aerith had said that to him, in a dream, once.

“Cloud?”

Cloud’s head snapped up. Scuttling to the edge of the roof, he peeked down just in time to see Tifa wriggling out of their room’s window. He proffered an arm and she grasped is gratefully.

“Waiting for Aerith?” she asked, settling down beside Cloud, just close enough that their arms brushed.

“Yep.”

“Kinda cold.”

“Yeah.”

“....You ok?”

“Uh-huh.”

“....Want me to go?”

“What?” Cloud mumbled, jerking his head up to look at Tifa incredulously. “No.”

“Oh,” she said, tucking a strand of, her now short, hair behind her ear. She really did look very good with short hair, Cloud thought. Beautiful. “You just seem distracted.”

“Hm.”

“Is it about Aerith?”

Cloud sighed; his chest seemed to protest with the depth of his breath. Staring up at that false swathe of stars in the sky, he nodded once.

“So, there is something going on between you two?” Tifa murmured, idly tracing shapes into the dirtied rooftop with a gloved finger.

And Cloud’s denial choked in this throat...like the words were a lie, instead of the irrevocable truth. This had happened before, down in the sewers, when Tifa had asked him almost the very same thing. He could not say no. He could not tell the truth. Because the truth seemed inaccurate to life somehow.

And yet, when Aerith had questioned Cloud about his relationship with Tifa, he had immediately denied it, immediately reduced their connection to nothing more than a fragmentary friendship between two people who had grown up in the same bumblefuck country town.

Which _was_ a lie!

“The two of you go together like this.” Tifa continued, when it was evident Cloud would not (could not) speak. She twined two of her fingers together and smiled sadly at the results. Cloud wanted to reach out and hold her hand, or brush her cheek, or do anything to tell her it wasn’t real, that he wasn’t deeply in love with Aerith already, that everything felt out of his control, including all his thoughts, feelings, and actions. But that wasn’t who Cloud was...and that wasn’t within his ability, not when even the thought of Aerith seized his muscles into place, like a benevolent goddess freezing him with her powers.

Instead he simply asked, “....What do you mean?”

“Like magnets.” Tifa said, shaking her head and bumping her fists together now. “With compatible polarizations. It’s hard to explain, but...,” she pulled her knees up to her chest. “There’s a pull between the two of you. Right?”

Cloud thought of saying something dorky. Like, _‘There’s a pull between the two of us, too.’_ He wished he were better at these things. Instead, he settled on forcing the truth out of his mouth.

“I feel like,” he said slowly, “I’ve always known Aerith. Like...we’ve never not been... _friends,_ " he finished, picking his words carefully.

Tifa quirked one long, inky eyebrow, and Cloud’s lips pursed as he struggled to find the words to articulate himself.

“I know things,” he continued in that same hesitant manner, “about Aerith that she’s never told me.”

“Like what?”

“She was born on February 7th,” he said, frowning.

“Maybe she mentioned it in passing?”

Cloud’s frown deepened and he shook his head more vigorously.

“She’s got a diary hidden under the floorboards under her bed. She keeps it there because she doesn’t want Elmyra to know all the things she can hear. I _know_ she’s never told me that before.”

“Ok, that’s...a lot more specific.”

“Tifa,” Cloud said, turning to bore his eyes into hers. She _needed_ to understand.

“I didn’t know who Aerith was two weeks ago.”

“I don’t...I don’t know what to say, Cloud.”

Cloud’s shoulders sagged. That’s right. Tifa wasn’t his therapist. He would have to figure this out on his own.

They sat for a while longer in silence, and Cloud shuffled closer to Tifa so that their shoulders pressed warmly against each other. Aerith may have been one glaring red question mark in Cloud’s life, but Tifa was a constant; if Aerith was the raging, turbulent crash of storm waves, Tifa was the soothing, rhythmic sound of the calm ocean to his wayfarer’s ears.

But every sailor had something special that called out to him from the sea. Not many things, but the one, that caused adrenaline to surge through his body like a virulent drug.

The question was: Which one called out to Cloud?

### Tifa

When Aerith’s head finally poked over the edge of the roof, Tifa let a long sigh gush out of her lungs.

“Finally,” Cloud said in his stiff way of teasing. He smiled softly at Aerith, but the many crinkles that graced his forehead betrayed his constrained stress. Tifa felt a stab of jealously wrench through her chest, and she forced herself to smile enthusiastically at Aerith.

“Sorry I took so long,” the girl said sheepishly. One of her slim arms waved above her head, and a large plastic bag of stuff dangled precariously from her fingers. Tifa did not miss the Shinra logo imprinted boldly on the plastic bag. Aerith smiled back at them, bright like a flood light, and proclaimed, “I have brought with me, snacks.”

Tifa crawled to the edge of the roof to hoist her up; the three of them sat in a circle, digging through the bag, which was stuffed with all manner of food and drink. Candy bars...but also healthy crisps, cans of energy drinks, and even prepackaged full meals.

“Aerith, where’d you get all of this,” Tifa breathed, inspecting an expensive looking pack of cold sandwiches; they were wrapped in the sort of colorful, bougie, over-the-top boxing that fancy topside cafés used. The kind of meal that cost 10 gil to manufacture, but sold for 100 to clueless, or simply careless, rich folk who had that kind of cash to spare.

“Stole it,” she said simply, shrugging. Something about her refused eye contact raised Tifa’s suspicions. Cloud’s too, evident when he asked, “From who?”

Aerith looked conflicted for a moment. She toyed with a lunch box, scratching idly at the translucent sticker that clasped it shut at the box’s mouth.

“I visited the Honeybee Inn,” she said in a quiet voice.

“You what?!” Cloud and Tifa said at once, both struggling to keep their voices under control.

“But,” she continued quickly, raising her hands in a placating gesture. “I didn’t go inside. I... just wanted to see it. I just,” she blushed a faint pink, “wanted to remember.”

“Oh,” Cloud murmured, and Tifa realized a furious red color had tinged his cheeks.

“Yeah,” she said, nodding and inspecting her hands more closely than usual. “I grabbed it from a guy around there. No one saw me.”

Tifa stared blankly at her two friends.

“Am I missing something?” she said.

“I forgot you weren’t there,” Aerith said, perking up. “That’s where Cloud got his dress.” She shot Cloud a sly, mischievous look. “Wanna know how?”

“No, she doesn’t,” Cloud interrupted, scowling heatedly at Aerith.

Aerith turned to wink at Tifa. “I’ll tell you when he’s not around.”

Tifa grinned in response and Cloud groaned in embarrassment.

“You know,” Aerith continued, peeling the wrapper off of a chocolate health bar. “Don Corneo’s a piece of shit, but it was nice getting dressed up for once.”

“Agreed,” Tifa said.

“Speak for yourselves,” Cloud muttered past the sticky chew of a peanut butter cup.

“I miss my dress,” Tifa lamented. “It was expensive. I bought it topside, too.”

“They’re all still in Corneo’s mansion,” Aerith said absentmindedly, poking at an unusually opulent looking hard caramel candy. “If only we could go back for them.”

It was at that very moment that all three friends froze in a pronounced silence.

Don Corneo’s mansion.

Don Corneo’s _abandoned_ mansion.

“Oh my gods, we’re _stupid_ ,” Tifa whispered.

### 8 Hours Ago: Sephiroth

"Sir. Mr. Sephiroth, sir."

A distinctly female voice interrupted Sephiroth’s dreams. His eyes peeled open and he glared furiously at the blinking digital clock by his bedside. It read ‘11:00 AM’ in blocky, green text. Too early, he lamented internally. Too early to be whisked away from the wonderful world of dreams, where everything was possible, and anything could happen.

Though, frankly, for Sephiroth, paltry dreams paled in comparison to what he could will into existence. Still, sleep was a human pleasantry he enjoyed indulging in. He stared up at the creamy white ceiling of his executive room; light bounced off of it from the wall-to-wall windows in a pretty pattern of rays and hexagons. Colors indiscernible to the average human eye danced in Sephiroth’s vision. Blue greens so crisp and tropical they reminded him of far-off beaches, and sweet, savory glasses of coconut water; purples so rich they almost appeared dense with weight.

Sighing, he rolled off his king-sized bed, snatching up the discarded pants on the floor, and pulling them over his white boxer shorts. Trotting to the door of his bedroom, he pried it open in one sweeping motion; the young secretary, who’s light blonde, almost white, hair had been cut into a short pixie, stared unbothered as his washboard abs greeted her waiting face. She was extremely pretty, Sephiroth noted; the previous Shinra had no doubt picked her as a personal assistant for that very reason, and then some. From what Sephiroth had heard, she was also extremely intelligent, and had graduated from one of Midgar’s top universities. He wondered what they were paying her to play a glorified secretary when her education was probably worth so much more.

“They gave you a card to my room,” he asked dryly, eyeing the conspicuous dangle of rectangles that swung carelessly from a lanyard around her neck.

She nodded once. “My apologies, sir.”

“Next time you need something,” Sephiroth annunciated, “You will _call_ me.”

“You don’t always take your cell phone with you, sir.”

“Then you will not bother me,” Sephiroth said simply.

“Understood, sir,” she replied almost robotically.

“Now, what is it Shinra wants,” he asked, retreating back into his bedroom, and waving for her to follow. She trailed after him as he slipped into his master bathroom; inspecting his face in the sink mirror, his hand flew to the pale beauty mark above the left portion of his top lip. Sephiroth’s facial blemishes had never bothered him before, simply because he had never cared enough to notice or inspect them. Now, however, he found himself eyeing the spot with unusual interest. What about it had bothered the little Cetra so, that her response to his question of what the matter was had been to point out this very mark above his lip.

“President Shinra says you…are to attend to today’s meeting,” the secretary called from the doorway, refusing to cross the threshold into the bathroom; Sephiroth could hear her picking her words carefully, diplomatically delivering an order she had already guessed would not be received well. Smart indeed.

Sephiroth had, on occasion, lived in the same area as Rufus Shinra. As a child, he had, like a pinball, been shunted between the labs, the SOLDIER living quarters, and the new Shinra Manor, right here in Midgar.

His times at the Manor had been infrequent, and brief, done only at the beginning of the Wutai War when the original President Shinra had not yet been ready to release Sephiroth into battle. During those times, for fear of his abduction by the opposition, a small Sephiroth had been passed from hand-to-hand like a child being traded in a custody agreement between an odd assortment of divorced parents; from Hojo, to Lazard, to President Shinra, and back again.

As a result, Sephiroth had never spent much time with either Rufus or his family. And besides all of that, Rufus Shinra had been a full three years older than Sephiroth, and not very interested in interacting with him.

“And if I were to say no to this invitation,” Sephiroth asked, turning on the faucet. In the reflection from the mirror, he caught her rolling her warm brown eyes and mouthing something that looked vaguely like the word ‘men.’

“I saw that,” Sephiroth purred, plucking his fancy, electric toothbrush from its holder on the sink.

“My apologies, sir,” she said stiffly. “I can call President Shinra now and deliver your response if you’d like.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Sephiroth said through a froth of toothpaste.

“Very well, sir. They’ll expect you at noon. The President requests that you… _please_ dress in SOLDIER uniform.”

* * *

At half-past eleven, Sephiroth followed the secretary, whose name he learned was Annette, down a winding maze of black marble halls, and red felt carpet. As before, office workers simply quaked in his shadow, or shrunk away from his towering frame, dashing into bathrooms and side halls so as to not have to greet him; higher-ups hailed him with trembled ‘hellos,’ and ‘good mornings,’ and some even offered to buy him coffee, chips, and vending machine snacks, which he thought unnecessarily sycophantic.

He waved off most of their advances in favor of listening to Annette drone on about what the coming meeting would entail; her cool, unbothered demeanor, and pleasantly attractive face, was quickly making her a favorite of his. They meandered lazily down the hall while she explained, in stilted, clinical sentences, Shinra’s purpose for requesting Sephiroth’s presence.

“You see sir,” she was saying, while swiping through a list of Shinra’s emails on a rather large tablet, “They intend to advertise you to competing corporations. The company lost quite a bit in the stock market when you disappeared. Mr. Shinra would like to remedy that.”

“I was under the impression that the Shinra company _was_ the stock market,” Sephiroth murmured as she directed them to short line of people waiting for their morning breakfasts from the in-house café.

“Oh, it is,” she said, deleting…deleting fan mail, Sephiroth realized. Strings and strings of emails addressed to Rufus Shinra, _not_ as the newly appointed President of the Shinra Electric Company, but to Rufus Shinra, the handsome devil who had finally succeeded his pruned and shriveling father as head of the company, head of Midgar, and indeed, leader of almost the entire world.

Catching the direction of his eyes, a tiny smile graced the secretary’s face, the first one he had seen on her since their introduction half an hour ago.

“The new President is very popular among women,” she noted. “As were you, sir.”

Sephiroth’s brows raised at her forthright observation.

“The executive heads would like to transform you both into poster boys for the company. I believe that is something you are already familiar with?”

Sephiroth nodded.

“They would also like to find the Ancient,” she mused, “And do the same. Besides Scarlet, the company lacks much female appeal.”

Something about _that_ irritated Sephiroth.

“What would you like, sir?” Annette asked as they reached the front of the line.

In the end, Sephiroth ended up with a piping cup of mocha and agreed, with some persuasion, to try one of the café’s breakfast sandwiches which was, indeed, delicious. Though he did not understand why, he thought that when next he saw the Cetra girl, he would bring her this very meal. She might enjoy it, he thought, and he filed away his order for future reference. Perhaps he could have Annette do it for him; dealing with the gawks and ogles of his coworkers was becoming exhaustively boring, and there was something uncomfortable about have dozens of eyes scrutinizing one’s every word during a simple order of food.

Finally, they trudged begrudgingly towards the conference hall; Sephiroth was pleased to see that Annette seemed as forlorn as he was as they quickly approached the room’s vast, black doors.

They were the last to enter; Rufus Shinra shot them both a withering look, but neither Sephiroth, nor his new companion, seemed to care. Sephiroth dutifully took his place at a seat near Shinra’s right arm, wondering if this indicated some sort of promotion, and watched with some level of sympathy as Annette was forced to stand at the new President’s left. He tallied the heads of those in attendance and, including himself and the secretary, counted nine people.

The new President Shinra, sitting proudly at the head of the table; Tseng, head of the Turks, sitting just to his left; Scarlet, lead of Weapons Development, who kept idly switching the cross of her legs, and glancing lustfully at both Sephiroth and Rufus; Professor Hojo…in charge of Science & Research…who glared…lustfully…at Sephiroth…; Reeve Tuesti, Head of Urban Development, who seemed lost in a messy, disorganized pile of grided, yellowed, planning sheets; Heidegger, Head of Public Safety, who tapped through his phone, a bored, disinterred look plastered to his heavily scarred face; and Palmer, the pudgy little man Sephiroth had first frightened upon his return to the Shinra Electric Company, and who, though spacey and childish in nature, lead the company’s advancement into the frontier of the world beyond their Planet’s ozone layer.

Rufus Shinra cleared his throat, and the gathering of people straightened up in their seats, except for Sephiroth, who had already been sitting quite properly. One by one, Rufus drilled each of his people, and one by one, each Head delivered what information they had to offer on the progress of their personal departments. Sephiroth ignored most of this drivel until all eyes came to rest on his handsome face. He stared at them stiffly from under his long, dark eyelashes, challenging them to say something, anything. Instead, after a few beats of silence, Scarlet said,

“What are we going to do with _him_?”

“We,” Shinra said, turning to bore his gaze into Sephiroth’s own one, “are going to offer for him a position as Director of SOLDIER.”

“I would rather not,” Sephiroth said immediately.

“You won’t have to do anything,” Shinra promised. “It is simply a placeholder.”

“What is the benefit to me,” Sephiroth challenged.

“Whatever you want,” Shinra said enthusiastically. “Access to everything. Just pose for a little, play poster boy for a few years. What’s the harm?”

“Whatever I want,” Sephiroth mused. And though he seemed to think it over, Sephiroth already knew his answer. Yes, because Rufus Shinra needed to think that he had Sephiroth under his thumb. Yes, because saying so would place Sephiroth in the unique position of garnering the trust of the man who, currently, falsely believed himself to be the most powerful in the world. Yes, because when Sephiroth finally reclaimed his throne, he would make Shinra and all his associates suffer for how they had mistreated _his_ Planet.

Though. Rufus Shinra’s goals had realigned in Sephiroth’s original timeline. He wondered if this one would be open to the same direction as that other Rufus Shinra, with a little, friendly nudge. Well…these were thing Sephiroth had time to decide on.

“Very well,” Sephiroth answered simply.

Rufus Shinra nodded. “We will hold a gala, a few weeks from now, to reintroduce you to Midgar. There will be many eyes from around the world attending and watching. This is our opportunity to forge some new relationships, and plant our roots in some unclaimed places. We will be depending on you to play your part, Sephiroth.”

A plan unfurled in Sephiroth’s head, and carefully, he reordered his itinerary of goals to accommodate for this new path. Continued access to the Shinra facility would mean Sephiroth could more easily arrange speedy transportation to and from various parts of the world for the Cetra girl. A few more weeks and Icicle Inn would become a 15 hour plane ride, for the Cetra girl at least. Sephiroth was more than capable of speeding across the Planet to arrive at this place, but he was afraid the trip there, in his arms, or cradled by his magic, would, quite literally, frighten her to death before they could arrive. And she was too fragile, and too precious a resource, to mistreat.

These thoughts flitted through his head quickly. Rufus Shinra had only been waiting for five or six seconds when Sephiroth stared back into navy blue eyes. Something in Shinra’s eyes…sparked, when Sephiroth looked at him this way, and Sephiroth wondered…No, surely not. But perhaps…It _would_ explain why it seemed that Rufus Shinra had not produced the many illegitimate heirs his father had.

But, never mind that.

“I look forward to it,” Sephiroth purred, and a broad smile spread across Rufus Shinra’s waiting face.

### 5 Hours Ago: Aerith

_Aerith, doubled over, glossed a hand over the bouquet of flowers bending in the wind at her feet. Their yellow petals, feather light, tickled her arm pleasurably. She grabbed one and pinched it gently between her fingers. It felt like velvet against her own supple skin._

_“Follow the yellow flowers,” she murmured. Her eyes swept across the blooming field before her; green strands of grass and flaxen colors flowers beckoned at her happily, and she found herself unable to decide which direction to go. She must be at the very center of the path that all yellow flowers lead to, she reasoned, as, on every side of her, she was surrounded by their brilliant, almost golden color._

_The scent of spring hung like a light perfume in the air, and Aerith sunk to the ground, laying spread eagle in the mass of flora that surrounded her. She squinted at the afternoon sky, which shone with a ferocity she had never yet witnessed. It would have reminded of Meteor, except that it was very far away, and, at the moment, Aerith felt much too content to think of such a dastardly event._

_She waited, and waited, and waited. She could not follow the flowers. Therefore, someone else must be following them to her._

_Eventually, the muted crunch of boots on soft, springy flowers roused Aerith out of her reverie. Her eyes moved away from meteor, and she found herself staring at the slow approaching frame of someone very tall. Masked by the glare from Meteor, Aeirth waited patiently for this stranger to come closer._

_As he did, for he was indeed a man, Aerith found herself able to discern certain features. He was handsome, that much she could already tell. Gentle brown eyes peered out from under neat, dark eyebrows. A shadow of hair, the barest beginnings of a beard, had sprouted out along his face. His black hair was cut short to his head, an inky sheen that better defined the pleasant shape of his sharp, but soft, features._

_He wore dark clothes, and in the crook of his arms, Aerith was surprised to see a small bundle in the shape of a little human. When they could see each other clearly, he smiled at her, and for some reason, Aerith beamed brightly back at him._

_She reach out for the child as he got closer, and he passed the small bundle to him. A sweet, sleeping baby, that cooed softly against Aerith’s chest; her (because for some reason Aerith knew this baby was a girl) little mouth puckered in a wanting ‘o’._

_Aerith looked up the man and smiled brighter still. He bent down beside her, and for the first time, she scrutinized his face clearly._

_He looked so familiar. The sort of handsome Aerith knew she had seen before. She lifted a hand and cupped his cheek; he closed his eyes, and eyelashes like feathers dusted against his face._

_I know you, Aerith thought._

_Her touch seemed to bring with it a wash of memories; they stood proudly on a hilltop. The tawny heads of two small children bobbed away from them. They watched them go and his hand wrapped around hers warmly. She brushed her thumb against the supple skin of his wrist and pressed her head against his shoulder._

_Another memory. The children, adults now. They are in animated discussion with him, their father. Aerith is smiling affectionately at them, and it becomes clear she is their mother. One of them produces from her pocket a bright white materia; she rolls it between her palms, and her father warns her to be careful with it._

_Aerith is sucked out of these visions violently. Her last glimpse of this future is an image of the woman, of herself, pressed tightly against this man, arms wrapped like gold chains around his strong neck._

_Aerith, cognizant now, looked at the man beneath her fingers; they roamed across the stubble on his cheek, and, as if by some sort of innate intuition, stopped above the leftmost portion of his upper lip. With some effort, she pushed the little bits of stubble out of the way and squinted hard, then blinked a few times to make sure she was seeing right. There, right above his lip, was the palest little freckle. Aerith knew she had seen this somewhere before._

_And then, as the realization washed over her like an icy bath, the man began to change. His stubble receded into his perfectly smooth skin, white hair sprouted in wispy tendrils from his shapely scalp, and his beautiful, warm brown eyes morphed into a vivacious green color. Slits for pupils replaced what had once been large black dots, and his dark clothes rearranged into the uniform she was so accustomed to seeing._

_His smile turned into a smirk, and Aerith tore away from him. The flowers around her began to melt, as though that were possible, and she realized Meteor had only come closer._

_And the baby, the baby was gone. She grasped wildly for her, but her daughter had disappeared. Crying out, she bunched her fist around a bundle of flowers and tore them from the earth, throwing them at him as though they could harm him._

_He frowned; not upset, or unkind, but confused. Raising an arm, he held his hand out to Aerith, and she watched him suspiciously. He shook his arm, more urgently, and his eyes flickered to the impending doom that was Meteor._

_His smirk melted into a smile, the half-smile that was slowly becoming Aerith’s, and he said something Aerith could not hear over the explosion from Meteor. She did not, however, have to. She read the shape of his lips, and gasped lowly._

_She reached out to him, and when their palms touched, a whole new vision unfurled before Aerith. Aerith, as she was now, head leaned comfortably on his broad shoulder, staring calmly into her mind’s vision as though she were looking into a camera; he, too, stared as if seeing Aerith, as she watched this alien vision of the world unfold before her._

_And, as Aerith found herself being ripped from this dream, only one word could touch her in this moment of endless confusion and trepidation._

_Sephiroth._

Aerith gasped awake, cursing and clutching the sheets of her bed in hands crooked like claws. She struggled upright and reached blindly for the lamp beside her, tugging too strongly on the little string of material that served as a light switch; the lamp teetered and toppled and Aerith caught it in her waiting hands, sucking in air sharply as one pointed part of it pinched a finger.

Righting the lamp, which was vaguely exotic in design, she sighed heavily and squinted at the clock on her bedside table. It was nearly time to leave. She wondered if Tifa and Red XIII, who had both been so easily persuaded to accompany her, had awoken with the same butterflies in their stomaches that she felt now in hers.

She flexed her fingers idly, and traced the hills of her right palm, remembering vividly the feeling of Sephiroth’s muscular chest underneath them.

That dream. She would need to stop this, whatever this...this budding affection for that eldritch horror was. She could not trust Sephiroth. He was not her friend, nor even her alley. She needed to perceive him in the way he perceived her; a commodity, to be used, and left behind when the time came when they no longer required each other.

And besides that...every bit of developing friendship with Sephiroth was a metaphorical stab to the people she loved, all of whom had been harmed by his cruel, uncaring, unloving self in some way or another. Even if his explanation for Barret’s death had been true, he had murdered two of her friends’ parents. And he had killed her, in another life, for crying out loud.

She shook her head vivaciously, like a dog dispelling water, or a person clearing their ears.

Putting her fading dream out of her mind, she marched to her new closet and pried it open. Layers of brand new, plastic wrapped clothes hung in bunches from tiered closet rods, and Aerith began to methodically thumb through articles of clothing looking for something reasonable to wear.

By just the feel of the closet, one could surmise the sort of preferences Don Corneo had for the kinds of dress he expected from his many brides. Aerith scoffed as she riffled through scanty tops and shorts so tight they might as well have been underwear, and let out a sigh of relief when, finally, she seemed to find the section of the closet that could be labeled ‘reasonable articles of clothing to wear in public’.

She settled on a comfortable pair of sweat pants and an elastic-feeling black top, then slipped into her new, favorite black windbreaker. She eyed her pink dress, and usual red denim jacket, strewn carelessly across an out of place stool, sadly; she had not worn her favorite outfit for several days now, but could not afford to do so, for fear of being recognized.

Stuffing her hands in her current jacket’s pockets, she slipped out a crumpled square of paper and unfolded it, smoothing it out against the surface of her bedside table. On it were instructions for entering Professor Gast’s underground lab, neatly annotated by Sephiroth in his almost calligraphic script. Her fingers brushed the little indents where his pen had pressed in a bit too hard, and she tried, with little success, to forget her dream.

Scoffing frustratedly, she stuffed the paper back in her pocket, and glanced one last time out the open window of her new room, watching from their elevated place on the mansion’s hilltop as Wall Street’s effervescent neon streets flickered to life with the setting sun.

A light wrap on the door pried her attention away from the city’s twinkling lights and she breathed in deeply.

It was time.

* * *

“So, just so I’m clear here, what you’re saying,” Tifa began.

“Is that we are not to mention this to Cloud,” Red XIII finished.

“Yep!” Aerith said brightly.

“And why aren’t we telling him?” Tifa asked, mouth twisting into a dainty, perturbed frown. She had dressed down similarly to Aerith, in comfortable, stretchy clothes.

“Because I don’t want him to worry,” Aerith said convincingly, because, in part, it was true. “If we don’t find out anything about Sephiroth in this lab, then there’s no point in him ever having known we went.”

“Aerith,” Tifa said doubtfully. “He’s going to be upset when he finds out we all knew. Especially if he finds out we told Barret as a backup plan instead of him.”

“I know him,” Aerith said flippantly. “But he’ll get over it when I tell him it’s because we didn’t want him to worry.”

“Right...” Tifa said, trailing off. A thick akwardice hung in the air, and Aerith knew she had said something wrong.

Ignoring this feeling, she cursorily peeked out of the curtains hanging from their Chocobo cart. The carriage rocked comfortably down the brightly lit path between Sector 6 and Sector 5; in an attempt to ease some of the tension, neighborhood watches from both slums had erected lanterns along the narrow, winding roads that connected the two places, and groups of helpful volunteers had elected to participate in routine patrols along the paths. In these times of suffering, Aerith knew it galvanized the people of the slums to see their neighbors taking such a heartfelt interest in the safety and quality of life of their fellow grounders.

Unimpeded, their cart lolled along effortlessly, and Aerith’s anxiety doubled. They would soon reach one of the easiest entrances into the Collapsed Expressway, the very same one she and Cloud had once used to avoid traveling through Wall Street; there, the group would take a convoluted series of underground paths that would eventually lead to “Gast’s Secret Lair,” as Aerith had taken to calling it.

All too soon, they disembarked from their comfortable ride. Aerith and Tifa distracted their driver with pretty remarks about the weather while Red XIII slipped from the back of the carriage unnoticed.

They waited while the patrol swapped hands; sneaking pass the throng of lightly armed citizens, they slipped down the Expressway’s crumbling ladders, and into the very bowels of its collapsed belly.

It didn’t take very long for them to encounter trouble, and Aerith thanked the gods that the two had agreed to come with her. Monsters leapt out at them from the dark, screeching and clawing like rapid animals.

At one point, Aerith became so overwhelmed with the seemingly never ending flow of terpsicolts that she simply began thwacking them over the head with her staff whenever possible, much to the amusement of her friends.

“I,”—thwack—“never,”—thwack”—“want,”—thwack—“to see,”—thwack—“a terpsicolt,”—thwack—“again!”

“I hope they go extinct,” Tifa spat as one of the flying seahorses clapped her squarely on the face with its tail. “I’ll personally make sure they go extinct.”

“I’ll help you,” Aerith promised.

“That’s a bit cruel,” Red XIII commented; if he had had eyebrows, they would have knitted together in concern. “All life deserves some fair chance at living.”

“Not these guys,” Tifa said defiantly.

Red XIII turned his crimson snout in Aerith’s direction, “Surely you, as the last of the Ancients, must disagree.”

“Nope,” Aerith said curtly, casting a spell of aero on the last monster. “It’s called ‘natural selection.’” At that same moment, she yelped and skidded on a terpsicolt’s mystery secretion, careening into Tifa, who gasped as her legs buckled out from beneath her. They tumbled together in a yelping, twirling pile of slime and woman, shooting down an incline, and crashing resoundingly into a wall of compressed junk.

“Gods, help me,” Tifa gasped, disentangling herself from Aerith’s limbs.

“Call an ambulance,” Aerith croaked.

“Hnnng,” Tifa said, planting her face into the slime.

“Someone, end this fresh hell,” Aerith groaned, flapping her arms and legs and making angels in the slime.

“I’ll end yours if you end mine,” Tifa coughed, rubbing a rib and rolling on her side.

Red XIII rolled his one golden eye at the girls’ overstated theatrics. Humans.

“And I believe that,” he muttered under his breath, “is called karma.”

* * *

Finding the entryway to the lab proved surprisingly easy.

The trio rushed through a disgruntled pack of thugs, who proved far weaker than the terpsicolts; Aerith winced as one man’s ribs popped audibly with a round house from Tifa, and mentally noted to request fighting lessons from the other woman at a later date.

Finally, they followed a maze of hidden doorways that eventually ballooned out into a well lit lab. Spacious and composed of many different floating platforms, Tifa claimed it reminded her of another lab she, Cloud, and Barret had previously explored before.

“It’s like a sci-fi novel,” she breathed, eyeing tanks of dormant specimens mistrustfully.

They followed Aerith’s map dutifully, and Aerith was pleasantly surprised to see that the lab seemed to be entirely monster free, with the exception of the seemingly sleeping creatures. She wondered how long they had been abandoned down here, and reasoned that they could not possibly, actually, still be alive. She did not take into account the fact that the entire place seemed to be feeding off an unnamed source of energy, for every light, computer, and electric door could be booted to life.

They traipsed along platforms unbothered until they reached a humungous, slow turning exhaust fan. Shorting out it’s power, they clambered down a ladder and through a vent; Tifa kicked open the vent entryway, and they tumbled out of it and into a tannish, surprisingly modern looking, but abnormally wide, hallway. The hall, Aerith realized, had been carved through a cavern, and the brownish parts of the walls that peeked out from between metal support structures were actually surfaces of rock.

The walls of the hall were also shelved with layers of Shinra boxes, and the group stopped to rifle through them eagerly, salvaging what materias and materials the company had left to rot down here.

Four doors down, Aerith found the room she needed. A, single, conspicuous door, the only one in a sea of reinforced, heavily metaled, double gates.

“Finally,” Tifa breathed, and Aerith nodded enthusiastically.

She cracked the door open, peeking inside, and hoping Professor Gast had been benevolent enough not to booby trap his most private room in the entire underground compound. The room on the inside contained a bench, a vending machine, several, verdant imitation plants, another door, some opened boxes of books, and Sephiroth.

Aerith turned to smile at her friends and deliver the good news that the room, did in fact seem to be, a safe place; doing a double take, she gasped, made a noise that sounded something like “yeugh,” and slammed the door shut.

“Aerith?” Tifa said, perplexed. Her prettily shaped eyebrows had jumped so far up that Aerith was convinced they would fly away, and she took this most inopportune time to admire how truly beautiful Tifa was.

“Sorry,” she squeaked. “I thought I saw something.”

“Want me to go first?” Tifa offered.

“No,” Aerith said, too quickly. “You two need to stay out here.”

“Why?” Red XIII asked.

“In case the place is booby trapped,” she explained, feeling a tad more anxious than she had been just a few minutes ago.

“But the inside—“ Aeirth was shaking her head before Tifa could finish her sentence.

“If anything happens in there, I can handle it,” she promised. “It’s out here that I’m worried about.” Tifa’s eyes flashed disbelievingly.

Peeling the map out of her pocket, Aerith indicated the room they were in front of.

“This little box is the room behind us,” she said, jabbing a finger at a small rectangle, “and the larger box behind that is Gast’s personal headquarters. That room leads to nowhere else, and it probably contains a lot of sensitive information. I can’t see Gast jeopardizing his work with poorly placed booby traps. And, if anything happens, Red XIII will be able to hear me screaming my life out.”

Tifa and Red XIII exchanged doubtful looks.

“Fine,” the doglike creature assented, “My hearing is superior to you humans, but just in case...please scream at the very top of your lungs.”

“I will,” Aerith promised.

### 2 Hours Ago: Sephiroth

Sephiroth stared blankly at the door where the Cetra girl’s head had disappeared. He leaned against the back wall, listening to their hushed conversation without having to move closer to the door; a bag of breakfast food dangled from his left arm, still warm from its recent purchase; a medium sized cup of mocha steamed in his right.

She debated with them over her safety, bartering with them until they agreed to stand sentinel outside Gast’s personal room; they arrived at this agreement with the Cetra girl’s promise to scream should she encounter any hardship.

Seconds later, she slipped into the room, an admonishing scowl already plastered to her face.

“Are you crazy,” she hissed.

Sephiroth blinked at her.

“My friends could have seen you,” she continued in the same breath.

Sephiroth frowned. For all his vast intelligence, he had, admittedly, not thought that through properly.

“My apologies,” he murmured.

“No, you listen—Oh.” The finger that had been about to lift dropped languidly to her side. She grinned brightly at him and said sheepishly, “I thought you’d argue.”

“Hmph,” was Sephiroth’s only response. She padded closer to him, then hesitated with five feet between them.

And all of a sudden, Sephiroth was not entirely sure why he had brought her his new favorite breakfast menu. An odd sensation spread like heat along his abdomen. The feeling conflicted furiously with his standard state of cool disinterest, and he smothered the urge to scowl at no one in particular.

Instead, he proffered her the bag and drink, and as before, she took them automatically.

“What’s this?” she asked, inhaling the warm scent of the mocha.

“Breakfast,” Sephiroth said simply. He could not, for whatever reason, explain that this meal had appealed to him, and he had wanted to share it with her. The words would not formulate in his mouth, and he wondered when last it was that these sorts of feelings had plagued him. Perhaps, that was the very problem; Sephiroth had not participated in human interaction for years now. He was rusty, out of touch.

Frowning, he also wondered what it was about this girl that often made him feel like a clueless, naked man standing in front of a jeering, hooting crowd.

“You’re...,” she trailed off, mouth tugging into a delicate frown as she picked carefully what she would say next, “sweet.”

This choice in diction seemed to surprise even the Cetra; she said the word with only some conviction, and in part, as though even she was not sure that that was the correct synonym to describe Sephiroth.

And Sephiroth short circuited. He stared at her blankly, not entirely sure how to respond. His mind filed through the many hazy memories in his head, searching desperately for the right thing to say. When he could not find that thing, deciding he was not eager to ruminate on the feelings churning in his stomach, he tilted his head in the direction of the door.

“Are you ready?” she asked, clutching her mocha more tightly. He nodded once.

And together, they crossed the threshold into Gast’s room.

### 2 Hours Ago: Aerith

This room, which was humongous, Aerith noted, had, like so many others in this lab, been bifurcated with two separate, open floors. The door they crossed through found them standing on an oak wood platform, which lead down to a cozy looking den, or living room area; the walls, which were a mostly off white in color, were interspaced were shelves of various geometric shapes, all containing tightly packed bunches of books; plastic imitation plants were sprinkled around most of the area, adding a touch of homely greenery to the place; Aerith noted the pull out couch on the lower floor.

It looked like a loft, she decided.

A loft...with exceptions.

For one, a giant, stretched table sat at the center of the lower level. Eight chairs sat on each of its sides, with a single one on each end. The table, on which still rested long forgotten documents, had been clearly used for meetings. An erasable white board hung just off to it’s left.

And...just opposite the platform, in the shape of a cylinder, from floor to ceiling, was an enormous holding tank. Green liquid, Mako, Aerith presumed, bubbled inside of it, washing across its occupant in tender waves. The humongous creature inside, which was a dark olive in color, and whose face seemed have been modeled after the silhouette of a skull, did not stir as Sephiroth and Aerith descended the stairs.

Nevertheless, as they approached its holding tank, near where Gast’s mess of computer systems lay, Aerith cowered in Sephiroth’s shadow.

Sephiroth, conversely, did not seem to care. Ignoring the beast, and ignoring the plush looking office chair, he booted up the computer system and slipped out the documents they had previously discussed...from somewhere. Aerith was going to have to ask him how he kept producing items from thin air. It was disturbing.

As his fingers wrapped smartly across the keyboard, she got the distinct feeling that her presence was not necessary; Sephiroth knew exactly what he was doing, and he was doing it so fast, she barely had time to process what it was that was flashing across Gast’s many screens.

She was just there to witness, she realized.

Grumpily, she pulled the office chair from by Sephiroth’s leg, and plopped down, sipping on the hot mocha and riffling through the much smaller bag he had brought her. It was a breakfast sandwich; a cheesy croissant with eggs, bacon, and sausage slapped in the middle. And it tasted delicious. After the second bite, Aerith was fairly sure Shinra had laced the food with some kind of drug; remembering her childhood in the lab, she had never, ever eaten something produced by the company that had tasted bad.

She watched Sephiroth while he worked.

And as had happened for the last few days, as she scrutinized him, all her inhibitions about him seemed to melt away. Gone were the the Planet’s warnings about his prowess, or dimmed visions of her alternative downfall. Forgotten was his acidic gaze, and purred threats. As she focused on his handsome face, the blaring alarms sounding in the Cetra half of her brain seemed to be drowned under water.

His face, though mostly impassive, occasionally showed signs of humanity. There were brief moments where he frowned, or his eyebrows threatened to mash together, but those were fleeting. Aerith thought that, perhaps, they would have lasted longer if Sephiroth did not move at the speeds he did. He was never confused for long, and as a result, those faces were rarely necessary.

Except for when she had called him “sweet,” just now, Aerith corrected herself. He had seemed to short-circuit, like a robot presented with a scenario it had not been programmed to tackle. He had stared at her blankly, and for those few minutes, Aerith could see nothing in his eyes that suggested someone was in there. She had been tempted to poke him on the bare skin of his nose, just to make sure he was alive, and to taste what he was thinking, but he had eventually thawed out, and simply ignored her comment in favor of coming to this room.

“This taste great, by the way,” she said, waving the sandwich. “Thanks.”

He nodded.

“So,” Aerith said between bites, “did you check this,” she waved her sandwich at the computer, “before I got here?”

“No.”

“Just that fast, huh?”

“Yes.”

Aerith blinked at him. She thought back to their previous conversations. Sephiroth...was not really talkative, unless he needed to be. He had been animated and excited that first day, by the flower shop, when he had so adamantly insisted that the Planet was facing some greater, as of yet, unseen danger.

But after that...Aerith had supplemented most of their conversations. And they had spent most of their time together in a quiet, that, for Aerith, was part fear, part cluelessness. What sorts of conversations were one to hold with a monster? She rattled her brain.

“Were you waiting long?” she finally asked.

“No.”

“Any monsters when you got here?”

“No.”

“Ok, well...guess I’ll just talk to myself then.”

“Hmph.”

“Hi, Aerith. Hey, Aerith! How are you? I’m good, how about you?“

Sephiroth turned his head slowly to stare at her. It would have been funny it the eerie green glow from the tank had not highlighted his features so...threateningly.

“You sound unwell,” he murmured dryly, though Aerith could see ~~her smile~~ the half-smile tugging at his lips.

She rolled her eyes at him, and then he defaulted to his favorite question.

“What are you thinking?”

“You have poor conversational skills,” she retorted without missing beat.

“Hmph.”

“Hmph,” she echoed, and he sighed, lifting a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose.

“I was in a meeting this morning,” he said, and Aerith brightened marginally at this attempt at human interaction.

“What about?”

“Rufus Shinra would like me to lead SOLDIER again,” he said. Aerith’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “They want to once more make me the face of Shinra.”

“The hero returns,” Aerith mused, and Sephiroth nodded. “And...?”

“I accepted,” he said coolly. “It will benefit us to have Rufus Shinra in my good graces.”

Aerith did not miss the ‘us.’

“That means you won’t be a secret for much longer,” Aerith deduced.

“Three weeks, to be precise,” Sephiroth clarified, “Enough time for businessmen the world over to fly in.”

“Cloud’s going to have an aneurysm,” Aerith mused.

“Perhaps,” Sephiroth said, and with one final click, a spread of variously labeled folders

popped into existence on the largest computer screen. Aerith rolled her chair until it bumped Sephiroth’s leg, and leaned forward to squint at the tiny white text under the neat little digital folders.

“We’re looking for Anomaly B,” he said. Aerith thought he had probably already seen the folder and was simply giving her a chance to participate. The alphabetical order of things, however, made it easy to find, and Sephiroth allowed Aerith the pleasure of finally being able to do something more than just eat. Brushing his hand out of the way, she grabbed the mouse and hovered over the folder in question, double clicking.

A spread of video diaries unfolded before them, each labelled with a string of numbers that Aerith guessed indicated a date. She exchanged looks with Sephiroth; there were hours of information, and they didn’t have all day, at least not now.

Sephiroth shuffled a little. A thumb drive made its way into the pinch between his forefinger and thumb.

“If they prove useful, we can save the rest for another time.”

She gaped at him blankly. His eyebrow quirked, and she shook her head. She really needed to know where he kept all this stuff, but now was not the time. He gestured to the computer screen.

“Shall we?”

“Sure,” she said. Anxiety crested in her stomach as she selected the first video. A black box popped into existence, blank as the video buffered.

And then, a man’s bushy mustache filled the rectangle. Aerith clicked another button, and the edges of the box moved to take up the entirety of the computer screen.

The video began to play automatically. The bushy mess of hair shrunk away; a pale man in his thirties with a mess of brown hair and rectangular glasses stared determinedly into the recording device. He was dressed in a hazmat suit, and as he moved away, he pulled a glassy helmet over his face.

Something about him looked familiar; this was Professor Gast, Aerith knew, but that was not what stood out to Aerith. There was something in face that made Aerith feel as though she had seen him many times throughout her life, when she knew that was not possible. Professor Gast had been declared MIA at the time of her birth. She had never met him.

He coughed, and began speaking:

_“Is this thing on, Hollander?” Professor Gast asked, looking off screen._

_“Yes, Professor.”_

_“Very good,” Gast said, and motioned for the recorder to follow him. They clambered over rocks and shiny green crystals. Occasionally, Gast leaned over to pluck something from the ground, humming and nodding as he did so._

_They were descending into a cavern, brightly lit by lines of powerful flood lights. Ropes of thick orange and black wires intermingled with quaint streams of underground creeks, and outcroppings of the kind of crystals that could be compressed into materia. Most of the lights, and indeed, other things like ladders and wheelbarrows, had the Shinra logo imprinted on them in a bold, but outdated, design._

_As they walked, Gast began speaking._

_“This is uncomfortable, isn’t it Hollander?” he said to his recorder._

_“What is Professor?” a distinctly exasperated voice asked._

_“Well, talking to oneself like this to explain things.”_

_“It is the way forward Professor.”_

_“I suppose you’re right,” Gast agreed. “Much easier than writing everything down.”_

_“Yes, Professor.”_

_“I guess you’ve had a lot of practice with it, haven’t you? What with Project G being in full swing now.”_

_“That I have,” the recorder responded, a touch of pride coloring his voice._

_“How are they, by the way? They must be three or four years old now.”_

_“You’ve got it right, Professor,” the recorder said excitedly now. “They’re quite advanced for their age.”_

_“Yes, well that is to be expected from children born of the Ancients. I’m hoping you’ll agree to have them meet with Ifalna soon,” Gast said._

Aerith stiffened.

_“Of course, Professor,” the man said, sounding delighted._

_“Yes, I’m sure she’ll be happy for the company. Sweet girl, that one. It’s too bad about her people.”_

_“Yes, too bad.”_

_“You may not have heard, you’re so busy now, but Hojo’s got his own little one in the works. Only a few more months now before his birth. It’s the reason Hojo’s not with us now.”_

Now it was Sephiroth who stiffened.

_“Is that right?” the recorder said stiffly._

_“Yes,” Gast said. Something like hope seemed to color his voice. “You two are doing the world a great service, returning the Ancients like this.”_

_“Indeed, Professor.”_

_The walked for a while longer until a vast cave opened up before them. A shallow pool of Mako seemed to take up most of the ground space around the cave._

_Gast stepped gingerly towards a heaving black mass at the center of the cave; light pooled around it from a above, leaking in from a massive hole in the cavern ceiling. The recorder followed more slowly, and after a certain point, simply zoomed in on Professor Gast’s shrinking silhouette._

_Gast, seemingly unperturbed, patted the carapace of the black mass companionably. Bits of goo oozed onto his orange suit, and he flicked them off with a jerk of his hand. He waved for Hollander to follow more closely, and the camera, almost unwilling, ebbed towards the man and the mass._

_On closer inspection, the thing resembled a cocoon of some sort, and what had originally seemed to be black skin was in fact a dark brownish exterior. It undulated as though breathing, and blue and green veins pulsated all around it._

_“Perhaps you should not touch it, Professor,” Hollander called, and Gast shrugged._

_“Nonsense. I’m fairly certain this is simply an extension of Jenova. Their landing places are too close to one another. And the Ancients were a peaceful people. You know that. Don’t let appearances deceive you; disgusting it is, it may very well contain valuable information.”_

_Gast pulled several vials and a knife out of a satchel attached to his hazmat suit. Carefully, he began to carve away samples from the cocoon. A Greenish-blue phlegmy substance oozed from the holes he made._

Abruptly the video ended.

A note and a link popped up on the screen; this video had been linked to one other, a follow up to Gast’s research, according to the note. Unable to stop herself, Aerith clicked the link.

A little, black haired boy appeared on the screen. His small, plump face was strewn with tears, and he clutched onto the white lab coat of a man Aerith did not recognize. The boy looked very much like the man in the lab coat, however.

This time the camera was angled as though stilted on a tripod. Professor Gast, dressed now in casual clothes and covered by a lab coat of his own, floated into frame. He held between his fingers a vile of the black stuff from the before:

_Gast crouched on his knees, waving at the small boy trembling behind the other man’s knees._

_“Come on now, Angeal,” he said kindly. “It’s very important for you to see these things.”_

_He shuffled closer and the little boy screeched._

_“Hollander, please,” Gast implored. The other man stiffened. Scooping the small boy up in his arms he backed away from Gast._

_“Professor,” he said, lips curling downward, “Have you even presented that substance to the Ancient?”_

_“No, not yet,” Gast said quietly._

_“And why is that,” Hollander snarled. “Are you, perhaps, realizing that these things are not what they seem?”_

_“Nonsense,” Gast denied, staring resolutely at the small child._

_“You know as well as I do that he,” Hollander shook the small child gently, “is not an Ancient. You know that, don’t you professor.”_

_“Nonsense,” Gast repeated._

_“Unbelievable.”_

The video cut out and another link appeared. Aerith clicked it immediately and gasped. As the video finished loading, a clear image of her mother appeared on the screen, so young and unbothered that she looked almost exactly like Aerith. She could not have been more than twenty years old.

She was angry, Aerith could tell already. Her brows were pulled down in a tight line, her mouth thin, the very same image of defiance that Aerith herself sometimes wore. She also stood in a room all too familiar to Aerith; it was their room, from the lab in Shinra’s HQ. The camera was relatively close to her, showing very little of the room, save for a portion of the bed, and bit of the ground. Ifalna and what looked like a hospital bassinet took up most of the frame. A tangle of wires spilled out of the bassinet.

The video began to play:

_“How long?” Ifalna breathed. She stared angrily past the camera frame._

_“Six or seven years.”_

_A look of horror marred her beautiful face._

_“Six...or seven...years...” she whispered. “And you never thought to ask me.”_

_“You were very young when we found you in Icicle Inn,” Gast said, still off camera. “I presumed you would not know much of your people.”_

_Ifalna scoffed._

_“Do you know stupid you sound?” she snarled._

_“We interpreted from what scripts were left,” Gast protested._

_“And you interpreted incorrectly,” Ifalna shouted, throwing her arms up. “My people are almost human. We don’t stop looking like this,” she motioned to herself. “Those things at the Northern Crater are nothing like us. This,” she jabbed her finger at the bassinet, “is not one of my people.”_

_A tiny cry echoed from the bassinet, and Ifalna’s face immediately morphed into one of regret._

_Gast appeared, abruptly, in the frame of view. He waved another black vial, and the little whines of protest emanating from the bassinet exploded into screeched, discordant cries. Gast stared blankly and forlornly. He sighed and wiped his hand across his forehead, not moving from where he stood. The cries continued to increase in volume, sounding more painful as time went by, but Gast never moved._

_“Stop,” Ifalna finally cried, shoving Gast away from the bassinet, then cringing as he lifted the contents of vial at her, “Can’t you see it’s hurting him?”_

_“I’m…sorry,” Gast said, sounding empty. “It’s just…so many years of research Ifalna. Gone. All gone. My life’s work.”_

_“Torturing a baby is not going fix any of that,” she spat, still pushing Gast, forcing him out of frame. “And would you treat him better,” she scoffed, quietly now. “He’s so small. You say he’s the Project’s most successful specimen…well, treat him as such. Give him some clothes. Blankets. Teddy bears, even. Babies need those things.”_

_“How old is he anyway?” she asked, sounding like she was afraid to hear the answer._

_She disappeared off camera, and more, weak little cries echoed from the crib._

_“Two weeks,” Gast said._

_“You’re horrible cunts,” Ifalna said, sounding venomous again. “Where are his parents.”_

_“Hojo said the mother passed away, and the father’s unknown.”_

Sephiroth went rigid.

_Ifalna appeared on camera again, holding an assortment of shirts. She flattened them on the bed, then reached into the bassinet, plucking a tiny, naked baby boy out of it._

_Bit by bit, she pulled the wires off of where they were clasped onto his tender, thin skin._

_“Ifalna, please don’t. We must monitor him.”_

_“Shut up. You want me to take of him? I get to do it my way.” The baby’s little cries of protest increased in volume and Ifalna’s face melted into one of sympathy._

_“Don’t cry,” she cooed, sitting on the bed and smoothing his stark ivory hair. She placed him on the shirts and carefully swaddled him. When she was done, she lifted the bundled in her arms, weighing him carefully. His mouth puckered into an o and his little face rubbed blindly against her breast._

_“He’s hungry,” she said, frowning._

_“Here,” Gast’s hand floated into existence, a baby bottle of milk grasped firmly in his grip. Iflana took it from him gingerly._

_“I’m surprised it’s not cold.”_

_“We’re not mistreating him, Ifalna.”_

_“Sure, sure,” she said disbelievingly while the baby suckled. “What’s his name.”_

_“He does not have one.”_

_“What are you calling him?”_

_“It would upset you.”_

_Ifalna scowled._

_“Then let me name him.”_

_A beat of silence. Gast sighed._

_“Very well.”_

_She looked down thoughtfully at the baby. As though she couldn’t help it, she smiled at him again and cooed. Her hand lifted and she wriggled one of her fingers into his small palm, smiling brighter still when he grasped it in his hand. It was easy to see her becoming enamored with this little creature, as many mothers did._

_“I’ve got one,” she said._

_“Hmm?”_

_She looked in Gast’s direction and smiled brightly. This face blazed like the glow from a sun lamp, powerful, breathtaking, impossible to look away from._

_“Sephiroth,” she said, “My little Sephiroth.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You ever think to yourself, wow, what a dumbass. 
> 
> Anyway, original note:
> 
> Chapter 5, Beginnings Part II to come.
> 
> Just a note on Sephiroth's name: In Dirge of Cerberus, we see that Lucrecia was having visions of Sephiroth being a baddie for a while to come, and called him by his name as well, but I've reasoned that Hojo didn't much care, or hear, about what Lucrecia was saying for the duration of her pregnancy. 
> 
> I also chose to have Ifalna name him as Sefirot is a Jewish concept, and since the Ancients seem to be conceptually based off of Judiasm, and Gast and his ilk, according to the games, didn't really seem to know anything about the Ancients, I don't think they'd be savvy enough to name give him a name like Sephiroth, that is essentially super Cetra. Besides that, I find it hard to believe that Ifalna was never introduced to Sephiroth, or Angeal, or Genesis during her time in labs, even if it was just to see them as little babies. Of course, the amount of time Ifalna actually spends in Shinra is pretty spotty. Hoping the remake will clear that whole mess up in the future.


	5. Beginnings, Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! So this chapter was really supposed to be the butt end of the previous one. It's still got important parts to it, but I regret that I couldn't have just posted them both at once. 
> 
> I hope you guys enjoy!
> 
> If you'd like, you can follow me at https://bayonettas-left-eye.tumblr.com/ and/or https://sephiroths-left-hand.tumblr.com/. I made the new Sephiroth tumblr exclusively for people who follow me for this fic!
> 
> EDIT: Hey all! Realized this morning that I posted a super draft; spelling errors and grammatical issue galore. Most are fixed now! I'm truly sorry about that.

### Sephiroth

Sephiroth did not like the feeling of shock. In fact, he loathed it. He did not like being surprised, and he did not like facing weaknesses. These things spoke highly of a human nature and Sephiroth had left humanity behind approximately eight years ago, somewhere in a dusty lab, with a severed alien head tucked neatly under his arm. Sephiroth hated humanity because humans had betrayed him, betrayed him even before he was born.

In this moment, this was what Sephiroth felt. The truth of these fleeting thoughts and emotions were debatable, but Sephiroth was not prepared to face the truth of his feelings. And though his default was to act cool and collected, he _often_ struggled to face the truth of his feelings. That was what had landed him here, in this position today. He had been unable to process his own reality, and so succumbed to a delusion that had very nearly killed him, had he not been so incompatible with lifestream. He had been weak. He would never be weak again.

His eyes slid to the face of the woman next to him, and he forgot the indigestible amount of anger and sadness that bubbled within him as he focused now on the way she looked at him. He could see her eyebrows mashed together in concern, her lips pursed tensely, her bright, green eyes attentively scrutinizing every inch of his face. Her lower lip trembled like she wanted to ask him something and her hand twitched towards his own, but she refrained from touching him. Sephiroth wondered how he looked to her. 

“Are you ok?” she asked. Again, her hand twitched towards Sephiroth and he almost wished she would touch him, almost craved the comfort of another human. Even if she would just hold his finger, he thought he would have felt better. Or pressed her hand to his heart again, the way she had the night before. 

“I’m fine,” Sephiroth said promptly, shrugging. “This information is...enlightening.” 

“That woman was my mom,” she said softly. 

“I’m aware,” he stated, as quietly.

She looked at him harder still.

“It’s ok to be sad,” she said, still at that same low volume.

Sephiroth frowned. Was he that transparent? He had always believed himself to be fairly good at being unreadable. Yet the little Cetra seemed to be decrypting him like a practiced decipherer. 

“I’m fine,” he repeated curtly, motioning to the computer. Another video had been linked to this one, presumably a continuation of Gast’s work. Sephiroth nearly flinched as he thought of Gast. He had always admired the man as someone who was intelligent, driven, and kind. These videos painted a very...unusual picture of the Professor, and Sephiroth found that a small seed of dislike and contempt for his once favorite researcher had rooted deeply in his chest. This sense of unease warred with Sephiroth’s other intuition: the knowledge that good people sometimes did bad things, and that that notion may have very well applied to Gast. 

Sephiroth had always compared Gast to Hojo; if Hojo had been the devil in Sephiroth’s life, Gast had been an angel sent to educate him, at least with what books of Gast’s Sephiroth had ever read. 

Hmm. That was right. Sephiroth had never met Gast. All his naïve, childhood assumptions had been formulated from well-written texts, with sympathetic, endearing voices. Curated, editorialized, perfected for the public eye. What had Sephiroth really known about Gast?

Sephiroth’s musing were interrupted as something warm wrapped around his hand. He looked down and his gaze snapped together with the little Cetra’s perfectly. She had wrapped her small hand around his. She had mistaken his prolonged silence for brooding lamentation. 

“Sephiroth,” she said softly, and a pulse of green energy flowed from her fingertips. An odd sensation overwhelmed Sephiroth’s brain. She was...sharing with him. Her thoughts, her feelings. She was trying to feed him a sense of calm, and offer her sympathy. At once, Sephiroth wanted to both shrug away from and embrace this invasion of his carefully curated bubble. 

But, had he not wanted this? Mere minutes ago? For her to comfort him with her own intoxicating warmth, a warmth Sephiroth himself theorized was not altogether human, but some sort of noxious byproduct of her Cetra DNA. Irresistible, comfortable, and tepid. 

He did not wrap his own large hand back around hers. He did not know what to do. He simply stood there stoically while she impressed effusively the openness of her heart on his. And then, when he had enough, he stiffened and her hand dropped from his and she was vacuumed out of his brain. And Sephiroth regretted this immediately, but his body warred with his mind, and his mind warred with his heart, and so he simply smirked at her, folded his arms over his chest, and said, 

“I am not that fragile,” echoing her words from yesterday at the Honeybee Inn, albeit, delivered a bit more stiffly than her animated manner of speaking. 

A small grin graced her lips.

“That is an interesting power,” Sephiroth mused.

“It’s a Cetra thing,” she said enigmatically, shrugging her shoulders; Sephiroth had the feeling that that was as much as she was willing to share, and the realization that she too had her secrets sent an unseen shock through him. 

Seemingly satisfied with her day’s good work, she turned to click on the new video link. A feeling Sephiroth could not identify settled warmly in his chest while he watched her, satisfaction oozing from her like the flood of light from a sun lamp. A little thought niggled at the back of Sephiroth’s brain that he ignored. It whispered to him and though he pretended not to care, it bothered him nonetheless. Because the pull of this desire, the temptation of this thought, tugged so strongly at Sephiroth’s conscious that it threatened to evict every goal Sephiroth had set for himself in this world. 

_You could bathe in this warmth forever_ , it whispered. _You could be happy...forever._

### Aerith

Aerith felt...awkward, as she glanced at Sephiroth. He had his arms folded tightly over his chest, and was staring resolutely at the computer screen. She wondered if he was hiding his hands so she could not touch him again. Their brief moment had been spoiled by his resilience to comfort...though, in truth, baring her soul to Sephiroth like that had been both daunting and uncomfortable for Aerith and breaking the contact had caused her to breathe easier when she had not even known she was holding her breath in the first place.

To be honest, Aerith wasn’t even sure Sephiroth was sad; he was so impassive all the time. So enigmatic. His emotions were safely blanketed under the cover of his stoic, handsome face, which was always smirking or frowning, and never much of anything else. She wished his hand had been ungloved. Her fingers itched to press against his cheek, or brush against his chest, to be pulled into the depths of his mind, and feel what emotions and thoughts played through his conscious. 

And Aerith, not knowing his feelings, had still been unable to resist the temptation to comfort him. It didn’t help that, so often, some parts of him reminded her of Cloud. 

_What’s wrong with you?_ She admonished herself. Wasn’t this...this budding affection for that ungodly horror of a man exactly what she had promised not to indulge in only a few hours earlier? She was dreaming of him, for Gaia’s sake. She was dreaming of Sephiroth, and the dream had been mostly pleasant, until the end. Sephiroth had said to her in that dream words that even now she pretended she could not remember. 

And besides, she had only been speaking with Sephiroth for a _few days_. _Three_ days, to be precise. Granted, Aerith and Cloud had seemed to fall in love with one another in the span of _one_ day, those circumstances were _different_. There were other things at play for herself and her blonde friend. With Sephiroth, there was nothing. There was no invisible, unbreakable force beckoning her to befriend him; she was simply doing it because she seemed to lack the self-control NOT to befriend him. There existed between them nothing that bonded one to the other.

As she thought this, her eyes flickered to the faces behind the video link her cursor hovered over. 

The frame of the video had frozen on Ifalna’s smiling face, her finger still grasped tightly in the baby’s tiny hand, holding a bottle to his petite, pink lips. 

No. Not just the baby. Baby _Sephiroth_. 

A confused haze of thoughts bothered her brain. 

Her mother—Ifalna—had _named_ Sephiroth. She had once _cared_ for Sephiroth. 

So what _did_ that make them?

Not siblings. Eww, gods no. Absolutely not. But...a new connection, Aerith thought. Family, in some warped and convoluted way? Was that what this was? Was this the bond? That invisible force that seemed to have thread their lives together? Perhaps, forever?

Aerith swallowed. Her throat constricted, and she realized, she had all of a sudden become very parched.

Shaking these thoughts from her brain, she clicked the waiting video link. The image of her mother and baby Sephiroth were whisked away, only to be replaced with another of Gast. 

He was standing in this very room; the angle of the video was aerial and both Aerith and Sephiroth glanced upwards. Surely, hung in each of the four corners of the room, was a surveillance camera. None of the four moved, and no light blinked, so Aerith assumed they had lost power a long time ago. 

Gast idled near the enormous tank at the back of the room; the monster that, today, spanned from floor to ceiling, was but a small shadow of what it would become, no bigger than one of those stouts Don Corneo’s pet Abzu had given birth to in the sewers. 

On the couch to his left, underneath the stairs leading to the elevated, loft like platform, were the much smaller frames of people Aerith immediately identified as her mother, and a Sephiroth still so tiny he could have only been a few months old. 

Aerith was surprised to see that behind Gast the long conference table had been shoved to a side, pressed flush against a creamy white wall; in its place was a single chair with what looked like a man who was snuggly fitted in a off white strait jacket. Mostly, his back faced this particular camera angle, and his face remained obscured. Two Shinra Troops stood on either side of him, and more hovered on the loft above.

“No SOLDIERs guarding them,” Aerith mused.

“I _was_ the first SOLDIER,” Sephiroth said, and Aerith turned to blink at him, shock sending her mind blank. That was right. Sephiroth had been the first; he was only a little baby in this video, so no others had existed then.

“I forgot,” Aerith whispered.

Sephiroth frowned, but not at Aerith; his eyes wandered nowhere and he said, “Perhaps not the first in a chronological sense,” he seemed to correct himself. “Angeal and Genesis were born before me.”

Angeal, Zack’s mentor, and Genesis, Angeal’s friend...and Sephiroth’s. In fact, all of those aforementioned men, with the exception of Zack, had been close friends, if Aerith was correctly remembering what things Zack had (sometimes illegally) told her. 

Angeal, Genesis, and Sephiroth. The first three SOLDIERS. Slapped together and forced into a friendship that was probably convenient for the superiors at Shinra; placing all three of their expensive commodities in the same holding area at Headquarters to control, manipulate, and abuse them. 

Aerith stared at Sephiroth, mouth hung open stupidly. He looked at her and frowned. One of his silver eyebrows quirked. 

“You know,” she said slowly. “You’re special.”

Sephiroth titled his head. 

“As are you?” he said and the way his voiced contorted at the end, as though he were conflicted between both telling her and asking her, made Aerith burst out into a fit of laughter. He could be funny...both with and without meaning to. 

He frowned for a minute, and then half-smiled the way Aerith liked. She shook her head, turned back to the computer screen, and clicked play. The video sprung to life:

_Gast’s fingers danced lithely on a discreet keypad to the left of the tank’s front-face. Four wraps of his finger and a low beep sounded three times; the room began to quake and, gradually, the tank slid to the rightmost portion of the wall revealing a glass pane with its own keypad._

Aerith and Sephiroth exchanged glances. So the monster was more than just a mere wall decoration. 

_Gast plugged in another code and the glass slid out of the way. While the angle of the camera could not show what lay within, Gast soon plucked a plastic looking container of something dark from its maw. As he backed away from the safe, the young man in the strait jacket began to writhe and mewling whimpers escaped little Sephiroth._

_Ifalna lifted the baby, scowled, and muttered something the camera’s audio did not pick up. Peeling herself off the couch, she ascended the flight of stairs, sitting near the entrance of the room, a disgruntled look on her face. She muttered something else, then kissed the baby on the side of his head and whispered something to him._

_Gast approached the struggling man with the bag and waved it at him. He seemed to convulse with the bag; his eyes followed it wildly and he protested so violently the chair, which had been bolted to the floor, trembled with the force of his exertion._

_“Interesting,” Gast mused, his voice sounding abnormally loud; he held a recording device in his hand, close to his mouth. This footage must have been supplemented with audio from that device._

_“This man,” he said into the device, jiggling the bag again, “was exposed to this peculiar creature during our excursions in the north. He was, like many of our employees, not required to wear protection. He did not come very close to Anomaly B. And yet, the case seems to be that it has effected ones such as himself.”_

_Gast returned the bag to the still open safe. The man seemed to unclench with the distance between them; he let out a long breath and slouched in his seat._

_“There are others,” Gast continued, “who went closer. And yet, it seems only certain individuals have begun to suffer from this...illness.” He bent over; his eyes were friendly as always, but the edges of his lips pulled down in a worried frown._

_“What is your name, young man?”_

_“My name,” the man breathed. He looked up at Gast. A flash of static darted across the screen. “Luca.”_

_“Luca what?” Gast said, still friendly._

The video frazzled and Aerith blinked wildly at the silver and purple dots that danced on the monitor. Abruptly, the footage crackled out of existence. 

“It’s been tampered with,” Sephiroth hissed.

Aerith turned to look at Sephiroth, brows furrowed. 

“Someone didn’t want people to know who he was,” Aerith said.

Sephiroth nodded. 

“But we learned something right?” she asked and he nodded again.

“It was making them sick,” she continued.

“ _Some_ of them,” Sephiroth specified. 

“What now?” Aerith said, a feeling of despair welling in her chest. 

“Now,” Sephiroth murmured, “we take all of this information,” he lifted the thumb drive and plugged it in, “and see what’s behind that.” His chin jutted at the slumbering monster and a feeling of foreboding overwhelmed Aerith’s despair.

“We don’t have the code,” she said.

Sephiroth chuckled. They waited for what felt like forever while the videos they had watched, and several more things, were copied to the drive. When they were done, Sephiroth plucked the drive from the computer and Aerith watched it dissolve away to nowhere. 

The Masamune materialized in Sephiroth’s left hand. He leveled his gaze with Aerith’s and tilted his head in the direction of the massive tank. 

“I have no need for codes,” he purred.

### Red XIII

Nanaki’s single good eye scrutinized the human woman sitting next to him. She had sunk down to the ground, pulling her knees up to her chest. Her downcast eyes, an unusual red color, flickered absentmindedly across the random patterns etched into the floor.

Nanaki wondered if he should say something. They had been quiet for most of the very long time that they had loitered outside of this room, which seemed to be special to the young Cetra. Nanaki did not understand its importance and he guessed that Tifa didn’t either.

“Do you trust her?” he asked abruptly. Tifa’s head snapped up.

“Aerith?” she asked. Nanaki nodded. 

“I feel like I do.”

“Then, did you inquire as to where it was she acquired that map?”

“No,” Tifa mumbled.

“Or how it was she came to learn of this place?”

She shook her head, lips tightening.

“Neither did I,” Nanaki said. Her shoulders deflated with his admission and the tension in her expression melted away. 

“I just trusted her,” she admitted, “because of who she is.”

“Because she is an Ancient?” he inquired.

“Yes.”

“I have made the same assumption,” Nanaki said. “But the more we wait out here, the more unsure I am. We believed her simply because we believe she knows more than we do, not because we know what knowledge she has.”

“That was stupid,” Tifa said bluntly, snorting.

“Indeed.”

Nanaki did not mention that, beyond the doors they waited in front of, he had heard the dimmed voice of _another_ , one who was not the girl. Nor that the scent of an unfamiliar male had clung to Aerith for a few nights now. His youth, inexperience, and trust for the Cetra clouded his judgment. 

“Her heart is pure,” he said, not wanting them to sit in silence any longer. “I have seen so myself. That is the reason I trusted her words so blindly.”

“That’s right,” Tifa said slowly. “She showed you something in the lab.”

“She showed me her intentions and shared her memories,” he explained. 

Tifa seemed to hesitate for a moment. Then,

“Before the Sector 7 plate fell...I’m pretty sure Aerith knew it was going to happen. She said some things that...just didn’t make sense.”

“And when we fought that creature. Sephiroth. She knew things then, as well,” Nanaki added. “But perhaps, those things no longer matter.”

Tifa looked at him quizzically and his long tail whipped back and forth. 

“She knew the fate which had been determined for us then. I do not think she knows the faith which is before us now.”

“Because we defeated the Arbiters,” she mused.

“Precisely.”

“Then...” Tifa’s lips twisted, “if fate isn’t guiding her now, what is?”

Nanaki almost mentioned the mysterious scent. Almost mentioned the voice, much deeper than Aerith’s, that mingled lowly with hers now. But before he could say anything, the entire underground complex seemed to shudder. 

Both he and Tifa sprung to their feet, scanning the hallway for as far as they could see without moving from in front the door. The ground beneath them trembled. Nanaki’s claws dug fruitlessly into the smooth metal floor. 

Suddenly, the quaking stopped; this anomaly was replaced by the intolerable blare of a siren. Red lights, which Nanaki had not even noticed dotted throughout the whole hall, flashed brightly, bathing the place in an alarming, crimson color. 

Then, a loud blasting noise sounded behind them. Steam billowed out of two releases at the topmost portion of the door, and the clicking sound of extra locks clamping shut echoed from its frame. Tifa grabbed the handle and pushed, wringing it furiously when the door would not budge. 

“She’s locked in!” she shouted, slamming her shoulder against the door. Nanaki winced for her, then felt surprised as she did it again.

Joining her, they rammed the door with their shoulders. The most that happened was that a shallow indent formed in the shape of their combined frames. As they, again, prepared to tackle the door, Nanaki’s ears twitched. Tifa bolted past him, groaning as her shoulder connected with the door, alone now.

“Aerith!” she called, slamming the door with her fists.

“Red?” she turned to look at him. But Nanaki was not listening to her. He was listening to the rapid approach of feet and claws. They thudded heavily on the ground. Nanaki remembered the slumbering experiments, sleeping soundly in their mako filled cylinders. They were running. Quickly. From all directions. Running with purpose...running straight to them. 

### Aerith

“No!” Aerith gasped as she slid backwards. Her fingers, like claws, dug fruitlessly into the metal surface beneath her, which groaned in protest as the beams elevating it crumbled into halves. She clung, slipped, and kicked her feet out just as the platform gave way with one final, wringing, metallic screech. 

Before she collided with the ground below, a thick, sturdy arm wrapped around her waist and hoisted her up....and up...and up.

A swoosh of air escaped her lungs as the floor shrank away beneath her feet; soon, she was so high up that a wave of her hand would have grazed the lab room’s ceiling. Below her, a humongous, eldritch-looking monster ravaged the place, flinging chairs, tanks, and computer screens in a spread of directions. Its splayed white eyes, like bugged beacons of light, tilted skyward until they raked over the two figures floating languidly at the top of the room. 

“What was that you had said?” her rescuer murmured, “I think it was, ‘I got this.’” 

Aerith frowned, because looking back at Sephiroth would have meant resting the back of her head on his chest, and she refused to give him the satisfaction of gazing upon her betraying blush. As it was, the press of the right side of his body against her back was already doing wonders to her, even while she swung perilously from his grip. It was at moments like these that Aerith thanked the gods that she had been born without a penis. 

“I totally had that,” she protested grumpily. 

“Should I leave you to it, then?” Sephiroth asked, and Aerith stiffened as the ground began to draw closer.

“I said had! Had! Past tense,” she yelped, patting Sephiroth’s arm. “Tag in, tag in!”

“Hmph,” Sephiroth said and Aerith could feel the sear from his triumphant smirk burning holes into the back of her head. Her fingers dug into the fabric of his sleeve as they, yet again, scaled upwards. The monster watched them greedily. Snatching a halved chair from the floor, it flung it at their ascending bodies, missing by mere inches. Sephiroth hmph’d contemptuously, and Aerith’s gaze flickered to the Masamune lifting on her left. He pointed it at the monster defiantly and it bellowed in rage; a soft chuckle escaped Sephiroth’s lips, and Aerith struggled to ignore the little vibrations it sent running along her spine.

“Now,” Sephiroth breathed in her ear, “watch and learn, little Cetra.”

As he said so, the monster lurched off the ground, leaping into the air with admirable effort. It’s claws swiped at them furiously, and Sephiroth scoffed. His blade flickered and Aerith flinched as one of the monster’s long, dark olive fingers was torn from its hand and flung across the room. It crashed into Gast’s computer system and Aerith thanked the gods for Sephiroth’s foresight.

“Can’t you just kill it,” she protested. 

Sephiroth hmph’d. “That...is not entertaining.”

“I’m rolling my eyes,” Aerith said. 

“I am as well,” he said, and Aerith stifled her laugh.

“Your friends are in trouble,” he mused. 

“No!” she gasped.

“Sephiroth,” she said, forgetting her earlier trepidations and pressing the back of her head against his chest so that she could look at his upside down face, “I need-“

Aerith’s words choked off as Sephiroth’s thoughts swarmed her mind. His brain was alight; so many different things buzzed in his mind, pulling Aerith’s conscious in a million different directions. She closed her eyes and tried to erect a wall between them. The thoughts dulled some, but when she opened her eyes, Sephiroth was frowning down at her.

“What is wrong?” he asked.

“You’re warm,” she lied immediately, turning a furious red. Wow. She really needed to improve her lying skills. 

“That is...wrong?” he asked, frowning. Below them, the creature hopped irritatedly on the balls of its feet. 

“No.”

“.....”

“I need to help my friends, Sephiroth,” she said, continuing to blush, and ignoring the profuse amounts of confusion emanating from Sephiroth’s thoughts. 

“There is no floor to put you down on,” Sephiroth said, eyeing the collapsed platform meaningfully. He was silent for a moment; Aerith watched as his head tilted ever so slightly in the direction of the door. “Your friends are holding their own well. They might finish before I do.”

Aerith bit back the perverse comment that danced around on her tongue. 

“That is unacceptable,” he continued. And then...then Aerith could not tell _anyone_ what happened. Sephiroth’s grip around her waist tightened and they were blasting through the air so fast that Aerith’s whole vision became comprised of streaks rather than solid shapes. The only noise she could discern was the whip of air in her ears and the occasional, overly loud screech of the monster. 

After what felt like hours of tortured moving, Sephiroth’s feet touched the floor. The monster lay before them in sliced pieces, so neat Aerith was sure Sephiroth had done so on purpose. 

He placed her on the ground delicately, but as the flat of her feet touched the floor and his arm loosened from around her waist, an overwhelming sense of vertigo and nausea set in. She grabbed his releasing arm and he froze; teetering in his grip, she leaned back against him for support. 

This would have been embarrassing had Aerith not been quite sure she was on the brink of collapsing. 

“Perhaps that was a mistake,” Sephiroth said.

“You think so?” she asked, somehow managing to sound both sarcastic and afraid. 

She gasped and swallowed dryly as her feet left the ground again. Sephiroth had lifted her, bridal style, and was carrying her to the dusty couch. He lay her down gingerly, kneeling uncertainly by her head.

“Sephiroth,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut.

“Yes?”

“If I die-“ he scoffed, “-here on this couch, right now, I will haunt your ass forever. You will never sleep again. Every waking moment of your life will be filled with agony.”

“I believe you,” he said dryly, catching her off guard. She looked at him and quirked an eyebrow, relieved when her double vision finally relented so that she was looking at a single Sephiroth.

He shrugged his broad shoulders. 

When she had recovered, Sephiroth, ever the gentleman, helped her off the couch, steadying her on her feet when it seemed she might fall again. They picked their way to the destroyed tank and, with some effort, Sephiroth carved through to the back of it.

The vault was exactly where they had expected it to be; Aerith was disappointed to see that only a single plastic container remained within it. She had hoped, in vain, that Gast might have left some clues in the form of documents there, but that would have been too easy.

As they crawled into the huge tank, Aerith noticed Sephiroth going rigid. He did his best to hide it, but when his sword finally manage to slice through the vault’s glassy door, he flinched so violently that Aerith almost screamed. She had never conceptualized Sephiroth as someone who could feel fear, or be unnerved; the very act of his discomfort made her terrified to uncover the creature within. 

“Don’t,” she said when he reached for the vault’s contents. The faces of little Angeal and baby Sephiroth floated in Aerith’s memory. This thing had absolutely terrified them, and they had just been babies; the fear was inherent, instinctive, and Aerith could not, in good conscious, let Sephiroth suffer that way.

Every hair on her arm rose as she plucked the container from its resting place. Sephiroth actually backed away, and she could hear...she could hear him growling! Like an animal! She had not even known he could growl! 

“This is it,” Aerith said. Sephiroth seemed unable to answer. 

“What do we do?” she asked, genuinely confused. Sephiroth offered his hand, but she shook her head. 

“It hurts you.”

“It does not matter,” he spit from between his teeth, voice commingling with the many snarls bubbling from his chest. “We must find someone who can look at it and I am the only one with access to those sorts of resources.”

“Sephiroth....”

“Do not test me now, Cetra,” he snarled and Aerith flinched at this unfettered venom. “Right now, I am dangerous to you. Give it to me and leave with your friends. I will speak with you later.”

Aerith frowned but relented as she stared into his eyes. His pupils were pure lines. He looked terrifying and Aerith suddenly realized she was not prepared to die. 

Another thought struck her like lightning. The most threatening thing in this room had not been that monster; it had been Sephiroth, and had he chosen to harm her, she would have never even gotten the chance to scream. She had mindlessly promised her friends she would be safe when, in truth, she had been in peril the entire time.

Because Sephiroth was still very much an unknown. Unpredictable. Dangerous. 

She handed the package off to him and lurched away as he disappeared into the air, so fast that she blinked and he was gone. 

Aerith stood in the room, alone now, wondering what direction Sephiroth had left in; there was only one entrance, meaning he had possibly even blasted past her friends, too fast for them to have registered his presence. She stared at the collapsed platform. 

“I can’t _believe_ he just left me here.” 

She stomped around the room know he was being entirely logical by leaving her here like this; everything about that thing had unnerved him, like an animal backed into a corner. Aerith comforted herself with the idea that, even if Sephiroth had been ready to strike, he had at least been _caring_ enough to consciously choose to remove himself from her presence so that she would not get hurt.

She snorted. She was making excuses for him! She was actually making excuses for the _monster_! What was wrong with her?

Ignoring her illogical line of thoughts, Aerith cautiously approached the slanted platform and stared up its diagonal face. Climbing up it would be impossible. 

Aerith knew she should shout. That was what she had promised her friends she would do.

Her friends! Oh, gods. Were they even ok? 

“Tifa!” she yelled. “Red!” 

Silence and then, “Aerith?”

“Tifa!” Aerith shouted in relief. “Are you guys ok?”

“Kind of,” Tifa shouted back. “We’ve sort of been backed into the safe room. How are things on your side?”

Aerith eyed the monster that lay in sushi pieces at the end of the room. They would NEVER believe she had killed it herself. 

_Think fast Aerith! What sounds believable_? She scowled and blushed as she remembered the badly formulated lie she had told Sephiroth. Something like that would not, could not, work here.

“Not great,” she called back, “But the Professor’s security system malfunctioned and saved me. It was brutal.” There. That sounded satisfactory. 

“Can you get out of the room?” Tifa asked.

“No! I’m super stuck...”

“Let me,” Red XIII’s voice interrupted.

“Wait!” Aerith shouted too late.

Red XIII’s lithe body crashed through the entry way, entangled in the buff, olive frame of one of the much smaller monsters that had been floating in tanks dotted all throughout the lab. They tumbled down the slanted platform, collapsing in a mess of bared teeth and flashing claws at Aerith’s feet.

She skipped out of the way, instinctively reaching for her staff, clasped to the back of her waist; it unfurled with the tap of a button and she sent a blast of magic towards the confused muddle of monster and whatever the hell Red XIII was. 

The blast collided with the side of the creature’s head and it tottered on the tips of its taloned feet, looking dazed, if that was possible. Red XIII darted foreword; his jaw wrapped around the creature’s jugular. Aerith flinched as green blood squelched from its neck. A choked cry escaped its throat, and slowly, it went limp clamped between Red XIII’s sharp ivory teeth.

And Aerith’s heart hurt for this creature. It hurt to watch it suffer. It had died, never having understood or tasted freedom. This hit Aerith at the very core of her being; she imagined Ifalna had lived a similar life. 

“Red, are you ok?” she asked. The dog-like creature was covered in a myriad of oozing scratches. Aerith was sure more lay hidden beneath his thick crimson fur. She dreaded finding out what state Tifa was in. 

“I am fine,” he said. His eye strayed to the heap of monster at the end of the room; Aerith realized for the first time that smoke curled up from its remains. 

“I got lucky,” Aerith said.

“Very lucky,” Red XIII responded. Aerith had the feeling he did not believe her story about the security system. If she was going to keep rendezvousing with Sephiroth, she would need to learn to fight, both to protect herself, and to make her lies more believable. 

She resolved to ask both Tifa and Sephiroth to teach her; Tifa, because she was perfect when it came to hand-to-hand combat, and Sephiroth, because who better than the first SOLDIER ever to teach her how to wield a sword. She made a mental note to pester Cloud and Barret for tips too; neither of them were mentor material, but both of them were excellent fighters. 

Wanting some way to distract Red XIII, she kneeled by his shoulder and began combing through his fur, healing the wounds that seemed the worst. His one yellow eye turned to look at her and she thought he almost looked grateful. A sudden swell of emotions overwhelmed her; her friends had willing placed their wellbeing in danger...for her. Two times now. Almost instinctively, she wrapped her arms around Red XIII’s neck. He stiffened, then, realizing Aerith’s intentions turned his massive head to press his wet nose against her forehead.

“I’m sorry,” Aerith said, realizing tears had sprung from her eyes. “I keep getting you guys hurt.”

“It was our decision to help you. Do not apologize.”

Aerith didn’t respond. Wiping the tears from her face, she sat back down and surveyed her handiwork. He was looking...better. But still worse for wear. She sighed. 

“How’s Tifa?” she asked.

“Not as bad as she looks,” he said honestly. They both stared at the entryway, doorless now; it felt like eons before Tifa’s head poked around its frame. Blood leaked down from her forehead, and a large cut had been etched into the tender skin near her neck, covered partially by her dark hoodie, which was stained with other dark, wet spots. Her short hair tickled her chin, and even now, she looked beautiful. She really had taken well to her new haircut.

“Everyone ok?” she asked.

“We’re fine,” Red XIII said. “How about you?”

“Everything’s alright up here,” she said, glancing backwards. “Let’s get out of here before any more monster show up.”

It took a few minutes to decide what to do. After surveying the entire room, Tifa suggested they pile debris up until Aerith’s fingers could reach Tifa’s; from there, the stronger woman hoisted Aerith up and through the doorway by her forearm, while Red XIII managed to run up the slanted platform and into the room.

The first thing Aerith did was throw her arms around Tifa’s neck. Tifa laughed.

“I missed you too,” she joked, but she circled her own arms around Aerith’s waist in a warm embrace. 

It was a relief to see their way out had remained in tact. Aerith had been afraid the alarm would have triggered a lockdown of the entire facility, but save for Gast’s personal room, most, if not all, of the other security locks seemed to have malfunctioned or be placed on doors not pertinent to the three’s interest.

Once they were back overground, meandering towards Wall Street in a comfortable Chocobo carriage, Aerith sitting across from Tifa, and Red XIII hunkered down on the floor, the interrogation Aerith had been dreading began.

“Did you find anything?” Tifa asked. Aerith had had a long lie recited in her head; but as her mouth popped open to weave this tale the truth tumbled out of her lips instead, like rapids beating through an overwhelmed dam.

“There’s some other kind of monster,” she blabbered. “Something like Jenova, but not entirely like it. And it was infecting people.”

“Like zombies?” Tifa asked and Aerith nodded. Red XIII looked perplexed.

“But I couldn’t find out the names of anyone who got infected because someone messed with the footage.” 

“It must have been Shinra...in which case their names will be in the Shinra Headquarters,” Red XIII said confidently. 

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Aerith said.

“We’ll figure out what to do,” Tifa said, feigning brightness. 

Aerith nodded, not entirely wanting to continue the conversation. She was exhausted. They all were. They needed to rest before they could form any sort of plan, or have a coherent conversation that included more than just summarizations. 

However...

“My mom took care of Sephiroth,” she blurted out. Her friends stared at her blankly for a moment. 

“What?” Tifa said.

“My mom,” Aerith said, and tears welled along the bottom of her eyes. “Ifalna. She took care of Sephiroth when he was a baby. He was only this big,” she said, miming an approximation of his tiny body. Clear snot started running down her face, and she could feel her chest rapidly rising and falling. 

“They didn’t give him blankets. Or clothes. Or toys,” she cried. “They were running tests on him when he was only two weeks old. Only this big,” she repeated, miming his size again. 

“And,” she looked at her friends, “I don’t know how to feel,” she said as a sob wrenched through her chest. 

“I want to hate him. He’s done so many horrible things. He goes against the very nature of this planet. But it’s not his fault. It’s not his fault he is the way he is. But, he’s supposed to be pure evil. I should hate him. He hurt you. Cloud. Barret.” 

Aerith was sobbing incoherently now, not entirely sure what she was trying to say, or even why this was effecting her this way. She was also editorializing heavily. Because this conflict was very much in the now. This conflict was ongoing. She should hate Sephiroth. But for the last 3 days, she had only enjoyed her time with him, only appreciated the hours they had spent together.

Red XIII and Tifa didn’t say anything; but Tifa crossed the space between them and held Aerith all the way home. 

### Sephiroth

Sephiroth was sure this was the fastest he had ever flown before. Midgar sped away beneath him while he lurched through the air. 

He held the container in his hand at arm’s length. Several times, the urge to simply destroy it pervaded his thoughts, but he focused on the planet and pretended he was not terrified for his life. The black mass within assaulted every one of his senses, all of which screamed at him to put as much distance between himself and the mass as was possible. Sephiroth had not, since his first encounter with Jenova, felt such a strong desire to run away. 

He was _scared_.

He reached the Shinra Headquarters in an admirable time, something he would have taken pride in had he not been so otherwise preoccupied. Instead, he ravaged up stairs and blasted through elevators so quickly that employees did not even see him, or barely registered the blur of his body; they did, however, feel him. Papers were blown into the air, people knocked down with unnecessary force, tables splayed and tossed against walls. 

Sephiroth did not have time to feel sorry for the panic he had caused. He weaved through desks and around cubicles and eventually found himself standing in front of the elevator that lead to Hojo’s lab. His hand raised to type in the passcode, but he froze on the third digit.

No. Not Hojo. Hojo wanted favors from Sephiroth and bartering with him was too difficult because, he too, thought ahead. Sephiroth could not let Hojo hold this specimen hostage, and he could not let Hojo know his fear of it. He could not waste precious time on a man he could not trust. 

Rotating on the ball of his heel, he blasted back through the office and to another set of special elevators. He waited impatiently for one to arrive and wondered why he had never bothered to learn what stairways lead to the executive floor. 

When, finally, he found himself in front of the right room, he forced the doors open without knocking.

Rufus Shinra looked severely displeased with this interruption. Sephiroth could not see why. He seemed to be doing nothing of worth in his overly large chair, in this overly large room.

“What are you doing?” he asked, scowling as Sephiroth crossed the space from the door to the desk. He tossed the container on Shinra’s desk then took several generous steps back so that he was nearly midway out the room again. 

Hating as the words left his mouth, Sephiroth stared into Rufus Shinra’s navy blue eyes, and said, “I need your help.”

And Rufus Shinra’s eyebrows nearly leapt off his face. 

“With that?” he asked, jutting his chin out at the container. Sephiroth nodded and Rufus’s fingers reached out for the tub-of-pure-evil. 

“Do not,” Sephiroth said loudly, “touch it with your bare hands.”

He froze. “Why?”

“It may possibly be contagious to you, somehow,” Sephiroth explained. “I’m not sure. I need you to have someone analyze it.”

“Hojo should-,”

“Not Hojo,” Sephiroth interrupted fiercely. “Someone else. Have them compare it with what information the company has on Jenova.”

Rufus looked at him from slitted eyes.

“And what will you give me in return.”

Sephiroth stifled a sigh. Though he abhorred the way every person in this building seemed to operate under a “you scratch my back, I scratch yours,” mentality, in truth, if he had been in the same situation, he too would have found himself making barters and bargains.

“What would you like?” he asked, feigning pleasantness. Rufus Shinra rolled his eyes. 

“I want to know what this is and why you need it.”

That was simple. And acceptable. Sephiroth needed Shinra anyway. And, to be completely honest, Sephiroth was overly confident in his ability to handle any problems involving the President of the world might produce. 

He should have had the same confidence concerning Hojo. And yet he did not. He wondered why that was, but as usual, struggled to acknowledge the truth of his feelings.

Turning his attention back to Rufus Shinra, he began explaining in clipped sentences. 

“Before Professor Gast defected, he was working on a project they were simply calling Anomaly B.” Rufus Shinra’s eyes narrowed.

“That is almost all I know,” Sephiroth said. “However, I believe this creature poses a threat to our planet. It seemed to have been infecting employees of your father’s at the time. I intend to discover just how dangerous this threat may be. It may be beneficial to understand the creature’s biology, and what individuals were infected.

“As you have access to almost all the information that can be found in this building, and as you seem to be interested in cultivating the Planet, I believe this project may interest you.“ 

“It does...,” Shinra murmured, now brashly reaching out for the tub and twirling it in his palms. 

“Very well, Sephiroth. However,” he looked at Sephiroth more intensely now, “I’m doing you a favor, and expect you to return it in the future. Especially because, technically, I own you, and this little deal we’re making now should actually be, exclusively, on my terms, and not yours. Do you understand?” 

“Fine,” Sephiroth said stiffly, stiflingly a snarl. He would humor this idiot, for just a little while longer, even if it did offend all his sensibilities.

“Very well. You are dismissed,” Shinra said, waving a hand and spinning around in his chair to face the spanning, wall-to-wall windows. 

“Oh, and Sephiroth? Never come in without my express permission again. Understood?”

When the time came, Sephiroth would enjoy destroying this man.

### Aerith

Aerith dumped herself on her bed, freshly showered, and comfortably clothed. She, Tifa, and Red XIII had all snuck in through the mansion’s various hidden entrances, attempting to keep out from under Cloud’s scrutinizing gaze. Only Red XIII had ventured throughout the place to let Barret know they had made it home safe and sound.

They had all quickly retired to their rooms, too exhausted to continue the charade of pleasantries. Aerith had stolen away bags of chips and a small container of ice cream from Don Corneo’s personal stash, real food forgotten. She plucked the tiny, melting tub of ice cream from a nearby table; cookie dough, a favorite. Settling on her bed, she peeled the cover off, and scooped in with a spoon. 

As she idly lapped at the sweet tasting ice cream, her mind wandered to the many thoughts and questions bouncing around inside of it. 

For starters, she was worried about the Planet. Unless this was all some insanely elaborate plot to misguide herself and her friends, Sephiroth had not been joking about the threat Gaia possibly faced. It was very real, and its existence had been poorly handled by Shinra, just like Jenova’s. 

But...if Sephiroth _was_ misleading her, Aerith needed to learn to strike the balance between how little and how much of herself she gave him. She could not completely place her faith and trust in him. It was foolish, and shortsighted. And yet, that is exactly what she had seemed to be doing for the past three days.

The aggressive, animalistic gaze he had wore earlier flashed in her vision. He had looked terrifying then. He had _been_ terrifying then. For that brief moment, when he had snarled at the thing in her hands, Aerith had truly feared him, feared him in the way she had on the highway. 

But Aerith knew the fear was temporary. Fleeting. It would only exist so long as they were apart. The moment she laid her eyes on him again, she would forget exactly why it was she should loathe Sephiroth. Because each hour she spent with him only humanized him more, and desensitized Aerith to his many past misdeed...

Misdeeds Sephiroth had committed, most likely, under Jenova’s influence, Aerith corrected herself. And then scowled. She was defending him, to _herself_ , yet again!

He had _killed_ her in another life!

A knock on the window made her start. She frowned, wondering for a minute, in her sleep deprived daze, why one of her friends would be floating outside her second floor window. 

The realization hit her like a freight truck.

Scrambling out of bed, she flung the window open, greeted, as she expected, by Sephiroth’s handsome waiting face.

“May I come in?” he said, with a tiny smirk.

“How’d you know we moved?” she asked. 

“I can sense and follow Cloud’s general direction.”

“Wow.”

Sephiroth nodded. With a small feeling of trepidation, Aerith waved Sephiroth in. There was something intensely personal about having a man you were both terrified of, and attracted to, standing in your bedroom. He folded his arms across his chest and leant against the wall near the window, as though sensing Aerith’s discomfort. 

“Did you give that thing to your inside man,” she asked, sinking slowly into a sitting position at the foot of her bed. 

His lips curled into a tiny snarl and Aerith watched him more carefully now, alarmed. But he seemed in control of himself. His arms tightened across his chest, and he gazed at nowhere in particular as he said,

“It is with Rufus Shinra. He is proving to be more valuable than my inside man.”

“How do you know you can trust him?” Aerith asked, surprised.

“I don’t,” Sephiroth said simply. “But Rufus Shinra is not a threat to me, so I do not mind involving him.”

A laptop manifested in Sephiroth’s hand and he snapped it open. 

“How do you keep doing that?” she asked.

“Hmm?”

“Creating things out of thin air like that.”

He peered at her from over the rim of the laptop’s screen. 

“It is not from thin air,” he explained. “I am able to send, and call, things from a dimension that exists outside of space and time, with some exceptions. That is where you and your friends fought me.”

“Remind me again why is it you need my help?” she asked sarcastically.

“You underestimate your value to this planet,” he murmured as his fingers danced across the keyboard. 

Hesitantly, he approached her at the foot of the bed, and offered the laptop. And Aerith felt her heart melting. Because he was so...sweet? So...polite? At least, when he _wanted_ to be. At least, to her. He did not want to invade Aerith’s personal space, did not want to make her uncomfortable, and so he dithered a small distance away from her. 

And, Aerith realized, Sephiroth had never spoken to her the way she had seen him speak to Cloud in her visions; even on the highway, when responding directly to Aerith, he had been relatively neutral, relatively polite. She would have to talk to him about treating Cloud better. 

As her heart melted, she found that the little bit of trepidation floating around in her chest dissolved away with it. The fear of him that she clutched onto when he was not there slipped from her grasp, like ice on a warm day. She patted the open spot on the bed next to her, and carefully, Sephiroth sat down, making sure to keep his elbow a proper distance away from hers.

“What’d you find out,” she asked, seeing he had pulled up the same set of information they had downloaded from Gast’s lab.

He sighed, double clicking a file that opened up into a very long document. “Gast only ever interviewed two others. Those videos were tampered with too, much better than the one we watched. His notes, however, imply at least eight individuals fell ill. All men. This was after Shinra apparently ordered the anomaly to be burned away.”

“They burned it?” Aerith said, brows knitting together. Sephiroth nodded. 

“The notes don’t say why, exactly, but I am assuming there’s a fair amount of...misleading information here about the timeline of events.”

“You think they burned it because of the people getting ill,” Aerith guessed.

“Precisely. Of those eight, three were very old and passed away, two went missing, and these three were allowed to return to their homes. That is according to the report.”

“But you don’t think that’s true.”

“I don’t.”

“Right,” Aerith said, shaking her head. “Got any more names.” 

“No.” 

He sighed again, and Aerith followed suit.

“This is hard,” Aerith said, and he chuckled.

“It seems fate is still working against us.”

“It _feels_ like we’re taking too long," Aerith lamented.

“We’re not,” Sephiroth assured her. 

She flopped down on the bed, forgetting for a moment who it was sitting next to her.

“There are too many layers,” she said. “Secrets, within secrets, within secrets.”

“That does seem to be the way Shinra operates,” Sephiroth agreed, staring out the still open window. 

Pushing herself back into a sitting position, she glanced past Sephiroth’s arm at what other files Gast had, hoping, though she was doubtful, that she could find something he had not. Seeing this, he passed off the laptop and allowed Aerith to scour through the many videos and documents Gast had assembled.

Aerith roamed and roamed until she came across a file titled Project S, at which point Sephiroth interrupted her explorations and said, 

“That one is not pertinent to us,” a little too quickly. 

She scrutinized his face and he scowled at her. 

Project S. Project S. What could Sephiroth possibly not want her to see? Project S-Oh!

“It’s about you, isn’t it?” she said blankly.

His scowl deepened. Staring into his eyes, she double clicked on the file, and Sephiroth frowned.

“What are you doing?”

“Hmm?”

“You are looking at me, but selecting the file.”

“I’m asserting my dominance.”

And for the first time, Aerith saw Sephiroth laugh. Not chuckle, or cackle maniacally, but really laugh. Laugh to the point that his whole frame shook, and Aerith smiled brightly in response.

 _What’s wrong with you_? echoed in her head.

When he could finally seem to catch his breath, he teased her.

“It seems _I_ am not the most frightening monster in this room.”

“I’m glad you finally noticed,” she said, turning back to the laptop and scrolling through the many files. She ignored the videos. She had seen enough videos today to last her a lifetime. Instead, she navigated through to photos. 

There were a lot of naked baby pictures...but not the cute kinds, taken by overly excited parents to commemorate things like “baby’s first bath,” or “baby’s birth.” Most of them were taken in what was clearly a clinical setting, with notes attached to them on Sephiroth’s health; things like his heart rate, his weight, height, blood type. And other things Aerith thought of as over-scrupulous, like the quality of his feces, and when his testes had dropped.

They weren’t cute photos. They were cruel. Even though Aerith knew this baby had long since grown up, something instinctive in her longed to reach out and shield him from the prying hands of the researchers who had cared for him. 

She glanced at Sephiroth, wanting to brush her hand against his cheek, and feel the thoughts that flowed through his head now. Was he sad? Hurt? Embarrassed? 

She stared at him, feeling her brows knit as she almost tried to force a reaction to manifest on his breathtaking features. His face, however, remained perfectly neutral, serene, even. Catching her gaze, he smirked at her deeply.

“Are you still asserting dominance, _little_ Cetra?” he teased.

“Hey!” Aerith protested, pretending to be offended. “We can’t all be six-foot-tall monsters. Don’t be heightist.”

He chuckled. 

Aerith turned back to the laptop and scrolled through the photos until they stopped looking like crime evidence, and started looking more like a baby album. Most of these happier photos had clearly been taken after Sephiroth had been put in Ifalna’s care. Many of them were of him cradled snugly in Ifalna’s arms, or sleeping soundly on her chest. He was in a different baby bodysuit every time; Ifalna had clearly enforced her want for him to have more clothes. 

And the love! The love that oozed from her eyes was overwhelming, even in photos. Oddly enough, Aerith did not feel jealous. 

She finally stopped on a picture of Sephiroth in a pastel green bodysuit that had the phrase, ‘Mommy’s Little Angel,’ sewn to the chest, above two white angel wings. The irony did not slip past Aerith. 

Sephiroth looked to be about two months old in this photo. Still tiny, judging by the hand that was smoothing down his milky white hair. Even as a baby, he had been born with a nice head of hair. 

“Look at you!” she said, flashing a sun-lamp smile at him. He tilted his head. 

“You were a cute baby,” she explained. He scoffed. 

“Hey! I’m being serious. Cute and tiny. It’s amazing how a baby can go from that,” she waved at the photo, then waved at Sephiroth, “to over six feet tall.”

“Hmph.”

The next picture was clearly of the same day. Sephiroth was wearing the same thing, and Ifalna had him cradled in her arms. They were outside, framed by an alcove of vibrant green trees. Aerith guessed that, behind the camera, there had probably been Gast and a small battalion of Shinra troops, ensuring Ifalana could not escape. Nevertheless, Ifalana looked...happy. She was smiling down at Sephiroth...and he was smiling back, in the silly way babies who had just learned how to smile did. 

Aerith blinked away the tears, hoping Sephiroth was not paying attention to her.

“Can you get this one printed for me,” she asked.

“Why?” Sephiroth asked, sounding genuinely curious.

“My mom actually looks happy,” she said softly. _And so do you_ , she tacked on internally.

Sephiroth was silent for a moment. Aerith didn’t look at him. She was afraid she would cry.

“Very well.”

“Thank you, Sephiroth.” 

“Hmph.” 

She sighed.

“My mom always like that ‘th,’ sound,” she said, glancing at Sephiroth. His eyes flashed to hers. He quirked an eyebrow.

“Aeri _th_. Sephiro _th_.”

“I see.” 

“Maybe if you’d been a girl, you would have ended up with my name instead,” she teased. 

“Perhaps,” he said.

“Aerith, the war hero,” she said magnanimously and Sephiroth rolled his eyes. 

They clicked through the photos until there were no more. Aerith handed the laptop off to Sephiroth and stared forlornly out the window. The sun was rising, and they were sitting here, tabbing through baby pictures. They were wasting time, Aerith thought humorously. Distracting themselves. The Planet was, maybe, possibly, probably, in imminent danger, and Aerith and Sephiroth were browsing through baby photos. 

“It’s about to get a lot harder for us, isn’t it?” she asked, turning to look at Sephiroth.

“Yes,” he said. She gave him a hard stare.

“Can you teach me how to fight?” 

He hesitated. 

“You should ask your friend,” he suggested. 

“I’ll ask her, too,” Aerith agreed. “But I think it’d be helpful to have more than one teacher. Tifa’s really more of a hand-to-hand person.”

Sephiroth seemed to silently muse it over.

“Please, Sephiroth.”

“Very well,” he assented.

“Yay,” she said, clasping her hands together, and giving him a sun-lamp smile. He half-smiled in response. “Oh, and I need some way to stay in contact with you.”

“Hmph.”

Sephiroth’s palm opened before her; dark purple, almost black, particles began to coalesce in his waiting hand. Aerith watched, engrossed as the particles fused to form a long, shiny, dark feather. 

“When you need me,” he said, proffering the feather. “You may call me through this. I will hear you, and I will know where to come.”

“Cool,” Aerith breathed, plucking the feather from his hand. And as she did so, Sephiroth’s thoughts whispered through her. Not strong, the way they did when she touched his bare chest. Soft, quiet...a feeling, or an inkling, rather than a coherent line of thinking. She ran her fingers along the stem of the feather, letting the individual strands tickle the skin on her hand. She thought the feelings coming from it suggested Sephiroth felt content, at this very moment. 

It was shiny and beautiful, and as the sun crested over Wall Market’s two story buildings and flooded in through Aerith’s window, washing Sephiroth in furiously bright light, she thought he was beautiful too.

Why was it bad that Sephiroth was good looking, Aerith thought? _How_ was it bad? Why did she blush whenever she felt attracted to him, and why was it she felt _awful_ whenever she felt attracted to him?

That was not who Aerith was. 

After all...Aerith had to admit...she was a bit of a flirt, at least, with the people she was attracted to. She had flirted adamantly with both Zack and Cloud on the very first days she had met them. She had never shied away from complimenting the people she was interested in.

But Sephiroth...he was her forbidden fruit. And that made him untouchable to Aerith. Unattainable. Impermissible. 

And that was stupid.

She was Aerith Gainsborough. She was Sector 5’s sweetheart. She was the local florist, the local charmer, and the local flirt. 

Forbidden fruit be damned. 

The sun shone brightly in Sephiroth’s eyes. And though they were a bit inhuman, they glowed like polished marbles in the dancing light. Effervescent and hypnotic. Aerith had noticed, before, how truly captivating Sephiroth’s eyes were. She had noticed that very first day, in front of the flower shop. Framed by long lashes, and smoldering in nature, they were hard not to admire. 

She had noticed the elegance in Zack's and Cloud's eyes too. And she had told them so. Both of them. On the very first days she had met them.

And all of a sudden, Aerith felt emboldened. 

“Beautiful,” she breathed, and Sephiroth quirked an eyebrow. 

“Your eyes,” she said. “They’re beautiful.”

He scoffed at her.

“I believe it is time you rested,” he murmured, standing to leave.

And Aerith, Aerith nearly protested. Nearly asked him to stay. To keep talking. To keep her company until she fell asleep. The shock of these thoughts zipped her lips firmly shut.

She _was_ tired.

She flopped back down on the bed, watching his back shrink as he approached the window.

“Are you coming back tonight?” she asked.

“Of course,” he said. “Training starts today.”

Aerith groaned and Sephiroth chuckled quietly.

“What are you going to do now?” Aerith asked, as though she could not stop talking to him.

“The same thing you should be doing now,” he replied, halfway out the window.

“You better watch your back,” Aerith said, yawning, “There might be little Cetran monsters hiding underneath your bed.”

Sephiroth snorted. “Frightening,” he mocked.

He turned to close the window as he left, and Aerith smiled at him sleepily. He half-smiled at her, and as the window shut, and Aerith’s heavy lids drooped, she heard him whisper,

“Sleep well…little monster.”

“Har, har, har,” Aerith said, curling up in a ball. Her fingers brushed against something soft, and she pulled it towards her face.

Sephiroth’s feather. It smelled like him. Crisp and clean and flowery. She pressed it to her nose and inhaled deeply. As Aerith combed her hands along the feather, she could taste, just barely, Sephiroth’s feelings. A small smile played on her lips as she dozed off. 

He was happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like things are still very cutesy for Seph and Aerith now...and that will be changing in the future :(


End file.
